


More than One Escape

by magicalIdiot



Series: If Aoi was left behind [2]
Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Suicide, Terminal Illnesses, VLR if Junpei and Clover were actually allowed to be espers, all canon-typical stuff because VLR is just Like That, also Junpei remembers things that he shouldn't, minor spoilers for Apocalypse fragment in ZTD, spoilers for all VLR routes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 08:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 14
Words: 48,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28792653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalIdiot/pseuds/magicalIdiot
Summary: Junpei has spent forty five years training his esper powers, SHIFTing between timelines, and looking ahead to see what the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition holds for him and Clover. He has to get her and Quark out of there, no matter which timeline they're in.Or, a continuation of the AU where Junpei, Clover, Light, and Aoi live together after the events of 999, so Junpei cares a lot more about keeping Clover safe in the Nonary Game: Ambidex Edition.
Relationships: Clover Field & Tenmyouji Junpei, background Alice/Clover Field, hints of Junpei/Akane
Series: If Aoi was left behind [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110935
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Luna Route

**Author's Note:**

> This is vaguely a sequel to Second Chances in the same way that VLR is a sequel to 999. You don't need to have read Second Chances to understand this fic! The important things to know are:
> 
> \- after 999, Junpei has hallucinations and dreams of the future that he can't control  
> \- after 999, Junpei, Aoi, Light, and Clover end up living together  
> \- Junpei and Aoi work together to try and locate Akane  
> \- Junpei remembers the events of ZTD (including how to SHIFT)
> 
> This fic relies heavily on prior knowledge of how events play out in VLR, so if you haven't played VLR, you might find this fic very confusing!

“Fuck!” Tenmyouji says angrily as soon as Dio has left the room. “I’m sorry, Clover. I think this is it for us.”

“Maybe the others will find us,” Clover says hopefully, but dread has already settled in her gut. She knows how this ends. Tenmyouji’s left hand is sliced open, and he’s been stabbed on his left side, near his ribs. Without any help, he’s going to bleed out anyway. As for herself...

Clover yanks her wrist as hard as she can for several minutes, until the metal has dug into her skin and drawn blood.

“You’re wasting your energy. We’re not getting out of this by ourselves,” Tenmyouji says gruffly. “I’ve seen this too many times. They never find us.”

“What do you mean?”

Tenmyouji pauses for a moment, then sighs heavily. “I guess Quark isn’t in danger at this point, with his bracelet off, so I can tell you. Clover, here. Can you reach this?” Tenmyouji reaches into his shirt pocket, pulls out an envelope, and waves an envelope in her direction. Clover has to lean to grab it. The envelope has her name on the back and nothing else.

“What’s this?” Clover starts tearing the envelope open with her free hand, holding it down on her thigh with the elbow of her cuffed hand.

“A promise that I intend to keep. Don’t waste your breath talking to me. Just read.”

Clover frowns, but she pulls three papers out of the envelope. All of them are folded and have names on the front: Light, Aoi, and Junpei. “What...”

“I promised I’d get these to you no matter what.” Tenmyouji slouches down against the wall, wincing as he does. His left hand flies to his wound. “Please, read them. It’s the only way I’ll die happy.”

“I don’t... I don’t understand. Where did you get this?” Clover pushes. Aoi never left the house, and she doesn’t remember Light or Junpei being friends with an old man. So how...?

Tenmyouji smiles wryly. “It wasn’t that hard. I wrote one of them, after all. Just in case.”

“What do you mean? Who are you?” Clover cries, annoyed at how roundabout Tenmyouji’s answers were.

“Oh, come on, Clover. How many people do you know who were friends with Aoi and Light and can see the goddamn future?”

Clover stops as something clicks in her head. “...Junpei?”

“Yeah. If you want proof, I’m sorry I lost that game of Codenames for us, and that haircut you gave me was the best one I ever had. And, hmm, I gave you a bookmark to convince you not to kill everyone with an axe...?”

“Shut up! I wasn’t going to kill  _ everyone _ ,” Clover splutters angrily. She’s happy to see him, really, but she has  _ so many questions _ , and now... “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“Zero told me to keep quiet or he’d kill me and Quark. Quark’s bracelet is off, and I’m about to die anyway, so I figure I can tell you now. You should read the letters. I’ll answer any questions you have left after that.”

Clover scowls but opens Light’s letter first.

_ Dear Clover, _

_ I’m afraid I must apologize to you. I had intended to stay alive long enough to see you again, but it seems like I may not be that fortunate. I have contracted Radical-6. My time is short, as I cannot guarantee that I will stay sane long enough to write everything I want to say, so I will be brief. _

_ I’m so sorry, Clover. I’m sorry I let you get kidnapped again. I’m sorry that I could not find you. I love you dearly, and I can only hope that you are somewhere safe from this virus and the havoc that has ensued. _

_ I am going to fight this virus with every fiber of my being, but there is currently no cure, so my chances of survival are extremely low. My last act of sanity will be to leave Aoi and Junpei behind with this letter, so that they may deliver it to you in my stead. I know that they will foolishly attempt to save me if they know of my infection, and there is no need to expose them now that I am contagious, so if you see them again, please apologize for me. _

_ I love you more than anything. Be brave, like I know you are. If we are lucky, we will see each other again. _

_ With love, _

_ Light _

Clover looks over at Junpei with tears in her eyes. “Is he really...?”

Tenmyouji sighs. “It’s… complicated. He’s not dead, but he’s… not all there all the time. He’s the only person in the world who contracted Radical-6 and didn’t die from it. But that meant he was fighting his own brain for ten years, until a cure was made from antibodies, and he spent that whole time in quarantine.” Tenmyouji’s voice is mournful, full of jaded sorrow. “I’m sorry, Clover. I wish I could do more for him.”

“No, it’s not... it’s not your fault.” Clover wishes she could reach out and squeeze Tenmyouji’s hand, but he’s using his free hand to try and staunch the blood flow. She could definitely use something comforting right now.

She lets herself cry for a couple minutes. Light won’t get to see her again. She’s let him down.

Clover’s gaze falls to the handcuffs. “You’re sure there’s no way to break these?”

“Trust me, I watched us die at this damn sink hundreds of times. We never get out once we’re cuffed,” Tenmyouji grumbles. “I have this feeling there’s another way out, but I can’t remember it thanks to the damn Soporil.”

“From when you were knocked out?” Clover asks.

“Yeah.” Tenmyouji curses. “I hope Quark makes it out of here. I wanted to get you out, too, but—”

“Hold on a minute! What about  _ you _ ?” Clover says stubbornly. Stupid Junpei, always forgetting about himself. “There’s no way I could leave you here. I...”

“I’m old, Clover. I’ve lived my damn life long enough.” Tenmyouji closes his eyes, suddenly drained. “The only thing that kept me going to this point was the hope that I’d get to see you again. Even if it was just for a moment.”

“You’re stupid,” Clover says angrily. “Do you really think I’d enjoy living if I knew that I’d condemned you to  _ die _ ?”

Tenmyouji chuckles weakly. “Maybe not. But I’d still get you out even if I had to die to do it.”

Clover wants to yell at him, but she doesn’t have the energy to be angry. Time is short, and there’s so much she wants to know.

She reads Aoi’s letter next.

_ Clover, _

_ Just in case you don’t make it back to Earth, I’m writing this for you. You’d better make it back, though. I’ve been waiting forty five hellish years for you. I’m so tired. I know Junpei is, too. But we’re both going to keep going so we can see you again. I’m going to live, damn it. Light’s alive, too, but he had to fight Radical-6 off for ten years, and that really took a lot out of him. We’ve been doing our best to take care of him, but he’s kind of like Junpei is whenever he’s having future hallucinations. _

_ Clover, I’ve missed you so much. Without you around, there’s been nobody else to torment me. I’m glad that you found me at the grocery store and decided to make my life a living hell. That was the best year of my life, hands down. I hope I was a good mother hen. _

_ I’ve been working hard to rebuild in New York. There’s not much to work with, but the rebuilding efforts have been steady. If you do end up living in this shitty future, I want there to be something for you to come back to. Even if it’s a wasteland with just one town. I never wanted to spend my whole life trying to fix the goddamn world, but I guess I couldn’t escape it, even if I wasn’t helping Akane. If you see her, by the way, please tell her she can go fuck herself. _

_ Be nice to Junpei. He’s had a really rough time. Also, make him eat his meals for me. He’s still shit at taking care of himself. _

_ I love you. _

_ Aoi _

“Is Aoi still alive?” Clover says slowly, looking up from the letter.

Tenmyouji nods. “He’s got all sorts of physical issues, though: arthritis, chronic pain, asthma. He overworked his body too hard, and now he’s as frail as glass.”

“That sounds like him.” Clover smiles fondly as she remembers chasing him around the apartment and yelling at him to get some sleep. “Does Quark know him?”

“Yeah, Light, Aoi, him, and me live together. I can’t tell if Quark learned how to curse from Aoi or from me,” Tenmyouji says with a small smile.

Clover laughs, as if they weren’t both about to die. “Probably both.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right about that.” Tenmyouji grimaces. “He’s probably going to die now because of me. He’s got Radical-6, I’m sure of it.”

“There’s a cure, right?”

“There’s a sort of cure, but it’s not easy to get ahold of. Science kind of ground to a halt for a while when the Earth was destroyed,” Tenmyouji explains grimly. “This place might have some, but I’m sure it’ll be hidden behind a damn puzzle or two.”

Clover doesn’t have anything hopeful to say to that. Junpei’s right. These Nonary Games aren’t made to be kind. “Do you know who Zero is?”

“Doesn’t matter to me. Akane was helping them, so she might as well be Zero for all I care. She invited me here and told me to bring Quark or she’d kill you. I don’t know why she thought she had to force my hand when I already damn well knew that I was going to have to come here,” Tenmyouji says bitterly.

“Akane...” Clover hesitates, but her curiosity gets the best of her. “Did you ever get to see her again?”

“Yeah. At the Mars test site. We... were forced to play a game. Not a Nonary Game, but something just as fucked up. At the end, Akane tried to erase my memory so I would forget her, since she knew we wouldn’t see each other for a long time. I convinced her to let me keep my memories. In exchange, I would stop looking for you. I knew at that point that you’d be safer with her than on Earth with Radical-6. I needed to remember what had happened in that facility so I could control my ability to read timelines better. I thought my chances of keeping you alive were higher if I could read the future and prepare for it, but, well, look where that got us,” Tenmyouji says bitterly.

“Were Light and Aoi mad at you for your choice?” Clover asks quietly.

“At first. Then the world went to shit, and they were glad that you didn’t have to see it happen.” Tenmyouji sighs. “I’m sorry, Clover. You deserved a longer life than this. I fucked up.”

“No, it’s okay. Alice is...” Clover lets out a shaky breath. She can’t say it. “I’m glad we share our fate. I’d rather we die together than have to watch you die. So thank you. For doing all of that to bring me these letters.”

“Quark is the one you should be thanking,” Tenmyouji says softly. Tears start to form in his eyes. “There isn’t a single timeline where Quark doesn’t get Radical-6 if we come here. I knew that. I couldn’t choose between him and you. So I showed him the note Akane sent me and let him decide if we’d come to the moon or not.”

“And he still wanted to come?” Clover says softly.

“Yeah. He said that if you were important to me, then you were important to him, too, and he was willing to take the risk.” Tenmyouji looks away. “If we didn’t come, you were guaranteed to die. If we did, at least there was a chance of both him and you getting out of here alive.”

“Quark... thank you,” Clover whispers, knowing that Quark can’t hear her. She doesn’t know if she can send her gratitude to him through the morphic fieldset, but she tries anyway. Maybe someone, somewhere, would feel it. “You probably regret your choice, but I’m glad you came.”

“No. I don’t regret my choice. I regret that I couldn’t stop Dio from chaining us to the sink.” Tenmyouji turns back and smiles at Clover. Now that she knows who he is, it’s easy to see that his smile hasn’t changed at all. “I’m glad I got to see you again.”

Clover checks the watch. They have five minutes left before the Chromatic Doors open. “Am I supposed to read this third letter?”

“Yeah. I wrote it a long time ago. I don’t even remember what it says anymore.” Tenmyouji suddenly lets out a grunt of pain and closes his eyes. “Shit. This old body’s not what it used to be.”

“Does it hurt?” Clover asks, as if there was any way it didn’t.

“Nothing’s worse than when I got hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal and sleep deprivation,” Tenmyouji says dryly. “The pain’s bad, but... the dizziness is what’s making it hard to stay awake. I don’t know how much longer I’ll last.”

“You have to stay with me until the end,” Clover says stubbornly.

“Spoiled... brat,” Tenmyouji mutters, but he has a grin on his face.

Clover opens the final letter.

_ Hey Clover. _

_ Hopefully, I’m still alive when you read this letter, but it’s possible that I’m not. If that’s the case, the old man who was close with Quark? That was me. Junpei. The guy you lived with for a year and went through a Nonary Game with. Well, now TWO games, I guess. _

_ I’m writing this letter in the year 2029, copying Light’s idea. You’ve already gotten to talk to my old self, so I figured you might want to hear from young Junpei, too, before I get all jaded and wrinkly. At this point, I don’t know much about the Nonary Game that you’re in. I’ve seen bits and pieces of it, and I know that you and Alice are there. I know that it’s dangerous, and I know that there’s a lot of timelines where I die, or you die, or both. _

_ I’m sorry that we couldn’t find you and save you in 2028, but during the Mars test site, I realized that you’d probably be better off wherever you were. I know Akane has you, and I know that she’s trying to enact a plan to create a timeline where Radical-6 doesn’t escape the test site. Like all of Akane’s plans, it’s warped and crazy and stupid, but your chances of survival in her Nonary Game might actually be higher than my chances of survival right now. Hundreds of people are dying every day. It’s insane. _

_ Thanks for being there for me last year, Clover. You, Aoi, and Light really saved me from myself. I can’t even repay you properly, but I’ll try. I’m sorry if I fail. You’re like a little sister to me, and I’m really going to miss you so much. We just got unlucky in the timeline lottery, so I’ll do the best that I can. _

_ Thank you. Love, _

_ Junpei Tenmyouji _

“You idiot,” Clover mumbles, wiping tears from her eyes. “I can’t believe that you thought I wouldn’t remember who you were! What the hell were you thinking?”

Tenmyouji laughs weakly. He’s practically gasping for breath now and he looks like he’s in a lot of pain. “I didn’t know at the time if you’d... have amnesia or a similar problem. I was just... covering my bases. I learned... the specifics of this game... over the years.”

“So you’re a really powerful esper now, huh?” Clover says with a grin.

“I wouldn’t... say that. I still... have very little control over... what I see. I learned... how to... turn it on and off, at least.” Tenmyouji’s voice is getting weaker with each word. Clover wants to hug him, but this stupid chain won’t let her get close enough.

The PA system dings. “Chromatic Doors have opened. Five minutes remain until Chromatic Doors close.”

It won’t be long, now.

“Heh... I wonder... if that’s Akane’s voice,” Tenmyouji says quietly.

“Oh, yeah. She’s old, too...” Clover’s eyes drift over to the partition across the room, and something else clicks in her head. “The old lady. That was her, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. I think so,” Tenmyouji says through gritted teeth. His face is pale and sweaty, but he’s holding on, just for her.

“Junpei, I... I love you, too,” Clover says softly. “You can let go, if you need to. You don’t have to force yourself to stay awake.”

“What, and... miss my last... five minutes... with you?” Tenmyouji says with a shaky smile.

“You always were stubborn,” Clover says fondly.

“Who’d... I learn that... from?” Tenmyouji shoots back.

“Aoi!  _ Not _ me. You were both stubborn and stupid. I was just there to keep you idiots in check,” Clover insists.

“Three minutes until Chromatic Doors close.”

Clover covers her left pointer finger with blood from her wrist and writes Dio’s name on her left thigh, so that anyone who finds them will know who killed them.

“Junpei? You still there?” Clover asks, glancing over at him.”

“Y-yeah...” Tenmyouji wheezes.

“You shouldn’t have let him injure you so badly,” Clover says, although she’s not sure why she’s worried. They’re both about to die, anyway.

“Wanted... you to... run...”

“...Yeah, I guess you would,” Clover says softly. “Sorry for ruining your plan, but it was a stupid plan to begin with.”

Tenmyouji is silent for a bit, and Clover thinks he’s passed out, but then he says, “I know. Just... had to hope... in one timeline...”

“There’s no timeline where I would leave someone behind after they got stabbed like that!” Clover says indignantly.

“...Zero...?”

Clover frowns. “Okay, If Zero got stabbed, I’d probably stab him again. But this is different!”

“One minute until Chromatic Doors close.”

Clover looks over at Tenmyouji. He’s breathing heavily, and his face is twisted in pain. “The Soporil will hit soon. Then, you won’t have to be in pain anymore.”

“Hate... Soporil...” Tenmyouji mutters.

Clover thinks back to last October— or, really, October forty-five years ago— when Junpei had been hospitalized. Junpei had pulled his IVs out multiple times while on life support because he hated anesthetics that much. They reminded him of being kidnapped. Well, Clover thinks sadly, he won’t be running anywhere this time.

“Well, it’s been an honor dying with you, Lieutenant,” Clover says and does a mock salute, even though Tenmyouji’s eyes are closed.

Tenmyouji opens his eyes long enough to look over at her with a smile. “Likewise... Captain...”

“Chromatic Doors closing.”

Clover forces herself to keep her eyes open even as she feels the mind-numbing effects of the Soporil start to settle in. At this point, it’s almost normal to be drugged. Yay for Nonary Games. She can see Tenmyouji’s face tighten in raw panic. “Don’t worry, Junpei,” she says as soothingly as she can muster. “It’s... okay... It’ll... be over... soon...”

Once she sees Tenmyouji’s body slacken, Clover lets the Soporil take her.  



	2. Clover Route: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've tried to split this up so that you can see how things happen simultaneously in different timelines, but if you want to read each route all at once, you can read the chapters out of order and it'll still make sense.
> 
> Also, I have taken some liberties due to the ambiguity of this route's ending. You'll know it when you see it.

Tenmyouji is too late. He’s always too late. Is this how Akane and Aoi felt in other timelines where he didn’t successfully save her? Is this how Akane feels  _ all the time _ ? Knowing what’s going to happen is useless if you can’t stop it. And when Tenmyouji runs into the infirmary, he knows he’s too damn late.

Alice is on the floor, blood pouring out of her chest. Clover is standing over Luna’s body, splayed out right next to Alice so that their heads are almost touching. There are two bracelets on the floor. Alice and Luna are dead. Worst of all, Dio is yelling at Clover, and he has a scalpel in his hands.

Like hell is Tenmyouji going to let Clover die here.

“What the hell are you doing?” Tenmyouji bellows, placing himself in between Clover and Dio.

“None of your goddamn business. Stay out of this, you senile old shit!” Dio says angrily.

“Like hell, you son of a bitch!” Tenmyouji leaps at Dio, knowing fully well that Dio will dodge. Dio sidesteps and moves to stab Tenmyouji, but Tenmyouji is able to catch his hand and push back. He won’t be able to hold this forever. Dio’s far too strong for him.

Clover watches, paralyzed by… what, confusion? Fear? “Clover, run!” Tenmyouji yells, and he grabs the scalpel by the blade to try and pull it away. The scalpel cuts deep into his left hand. He doesn’t care. He needs to stall for time so Clover can get out of here. He has to—

Clover runs up to Dio and punches him in the face.

“Clover, get  _ out _ of here,” Tenmyouji says sharply, pushing her out of the way of Dio’s counterattack. Dio readjusts his attack too quickly for Tenmyouji to defend himself, and the scalpel stabs him right in the gut. Tenmyouji cries out in pain, but he manages to stay on his feet. He remembers Light, five bullets in him, latching on to Ace and refusing to move in another timeline.

_ I’m doing this for you, Light _ , Tenmyouji thinks. The memory strengthens his resolve. He holds his ground even as Dio stabs him again. This time, he grabs on to the blade before Dio can pull back.

“Let go, you old fart! You’re as good as dead already,” Dio sneers.

Dio’s not wrong. With the amount of blood Tenmyouji is losing, and two stab wounds in the stomach, he’s a walking dead man. But that won’t stop him.

“Not yet, I’m not,” Tenmyouji grunts, and he keeps his grip on the scalpel. The blade cuts even deeper into his left hand. Pain shoots through his hand and up his shoulder, and he almost lets go, but he forces himself to endure it. He’s not going to let Dio hurt Clover. If she won’t leave, he has to find a way to end this.

Dio kicks Tenmyouji in the stomach to try and force him back. Tenmyouji uses Dio’s momentum to pull Dio back with him, and they fall into the ground. Dio is on top of Tenmyouji. Tenmyouji can’t escape.

“ **_Die_ ** .” Clover plunges the injection gun into Dio’s neck. Tenmyouji hadn’t even noticed her creeping up behind Dio. His whole focus had been on the knife.

Dio’s body slackens instantly, and Clover picks him up by the arm and throws him against the wall. The anger and hatred leave her eyes as soon as she turns back to Tenmyouji. “Hold on, I’m going to get you to the treatment center. Maybe those pods can fix you up.”

Tenmyouji coughs up blood as he tries to sit up. The adrenaline is wearing off, now, and replacing it is unbridled pain all throughout his body. His vision is starting to blur, and every breath sends sharp pain to his lungs and stomach. “No,” he manages to say. “It’s… too late… for me.”

“Shut up! You’re not allowed to die!” Clover shouts, tears in her eyes. She ducks under Tenmyouji’s arm and hoists him to his feet. He cries out in pain instinctively, but Clover’s strong enough to stop him from crumpling to the floor.

“Sorry… Clover.” Tenmyouji uses everything he has to cling to life. Just a little longer.

Clover starts walking over to the infirmary’s exit, completely ignoring Tenmyouji. He bites down his pain and closes his eyes. He hears the infirmary door open, but… it’s not the door in front of them.

“Phi! Help me move him! He’s badly hurt!” Clover says desperately.

Phi doesn’t say anything. Tenmyouji gasps for breath. “She’s… going to kill herself,” he rasps. “Put me down. Stop her.”

“What…” Clover turns around and gently places Tenmyouji on the bed next to the ADAM. Tenmyouji focuses on breathing through the pain, completely blocking everything else out. He needs to stay alive long enough to finish what he came here to do.

The next few minutes feel like hours to Tenmyouji. Maybe he has Radical-6, or maybe the world is just slowing down because he’s about to die. He doesn’t dwell on it. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Junpei!” Clover’s voice gets closer again. She sounds so sad. Tenmyouji wishes he wasn’t the one causing her so much pain.

“Shirt… pocket…” he whispers. Clover gingerly reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out the envelope and a picture. Tenmyouji’s job is done.

“This is… us…” Clover says tearfully. She must be looking at the picture. It’s a printed out copy of a selfie that Clover took at Coney Island with everyone in it— Aoi, Light, Hazuki, Seven, Junpei, and herself. It’s one of the few pictures Tenmyouji has left of his life before Radical-6.

“Take care… of Quark…” Tenmyouji coughs as he tries to speak. “Axelavir… behind middle… door…”

“Okay. Okay, middle door, got it,” Clover says through tears. “I’m going to get out of here, and I’m going to get Quark out of here, too. Don’t you worry.”

Tenmyouji smiles. “I know… you can do it…”

The darkness draws nearer. His time is coming to an end.

“Thank you, Junpei. For everything.”

“I… should be… thanking you...”

Tenmyouji wants to say more, but his mouth stops listening to him. His lungs stop breathing.

Finally, finally, he gets to rest.

~*~

Clover can’t stop crying. She knows she needs to, because Sigma is standing there holding Phi’s unconscious body and looking very confused, but she can’t. Stupid, stupid Junpei! Why was he always so willing to sacrifice himself for them?

“Clover, we have fifteen minutes until the doors open,” Sigma says quietly.

“Okay.” Clover takes a deep breath. “I can… explain as we walk.”

“You don’t have to. Just take your time.” Sigma is trying to be calm, but Clover can tell that he’s just as rattled as she is. And why wouldn’t he be, after stumbling into a room with four dead bodies and a fifth almost in the making?

Sigma had come just at the right time. Clover had been struggling to restrain Phi, but Sigma was more than strong enough to handle her. Sigma had saved Phi’s life. Clover hadn’t been able to save anyone.

“The neostigmine,” Clover says quietly, gesturing to the injection gun on the counter. She’d used the empty injection gun, the one in the infirmary, to kill Dio and… Luna…

Sigma grabs the neostigmine gun. Clover picks up all the bracelets. They walk to the warehouse in silence, except for Clover’s crying. Along the way, they pick up Quark. Since Sigma is carrying Phi, Clover carries Quark. She has to take care of him, now. Junpei...

The tears are starting to come slower now. She almost doesn’t want them to. It feels wrong to move on from Junpei’s death so quickly.

K is waiting for them at the white doors. He looks at the dried blood on Clover’s hands and the body in Sigma’s arms in horror. “What happened?”

“I don’t know,” Sigma says, and glances down at Clover.

Clover hands Quark to K. She doesn’t think she can talk without crying again. She swallows hard and takes a deep breath. “I walked into the infirmary to find Alice dead and Luna standing over her. I— I thought Luna killed her, so I— I threatened her with an injection gun with tubocurarine in it. She tried to take the gun away, but there was an accident— the trigger pulled, and—” The tears are back. Clover wipes her cheeks with bloody hands.

“So you killed Luna on accident,” Sigma says gently.

Clover nods. “I didn’t— I was never going to kill her, I just— Alice was my girlfriend and she was  _ dead _ and Luna was there, so—”

“It’s okay, Clover. It’s unfortunate that Luna was killed, but we do not blame you for it,” K says calmly.

“Okay.” Clover takes another deep breath. She feels like she’s falling apart. “Dio walked in as I was trying to use the AED to bring Luna back. He knew I killed her, and he… picked up the scalpel to attack me. Junpei— Tenmyouji— ran in and defended me. Dio and him started fighting. And Tenmyouji…” Clover can’t say it. She shakes her head slowly. “I killed Dio the same way I killed Luna. Except it… wasn’t an accident.”

“It was self-defense, if he was trying to kill both of you,” Sigma says.

“I just… wanted him gone. He’d injured Tenmyouji so much, and I…” Clover hangs her head in shame. “I was so angry.”

“That’s when Phi came in, right?” Sigma says. Clover nods. “Why the hell was she screaming about killing herself?”

“I don’t know. But Tenmyouji knew what she was going to do. He told me to stop her. So I tried my best until you came in and helped me, Sigma.” Clover’s throat chokes up as she remembers Junpei, covered in blood, begging her to keep going. How unfair of him, to ask so much of her. But she’d promised. “And then he died.”

“I see… Then it is just the four of us left,” K says, his voice melancholy.

“Actually, we have a problem. If Phi doesn’t wake up before those doors open, she’ll be stuck at the secondary door, and we won’t even be able to get to her,” Sigma says worriedly.

“We have the neostigmine. We can leave her out here,” Clover says.

“If she wakes up before we get out, and she’s still… trying to kill herself…” Sigma trails off.

“I do not see a better option. We will have to hope that she does not awaken,” K says.

The PA dings. “Chromatic Doors have opened. Five minutes remain until Chromatic Doors close.”

“I think we can inject her now,” Clover says.

Sigma nods and gently places Phi down on the ground. He takes the injection gun out of his pocket and plunges it into her arm. Clover takes the time to place Dio’s and Alice’s bracelets next to Phi, just in case she ends up needing them for some reason. She hands Tenmyouji’s bracelet to Sigma and keeps Luna’s bracelet.

“All right. Which doors should we go in?” Sigma says, turning his attention to the three open doors in front of them.

“The middle door. Tenmyouji said the middle door’s important,” Clover says immediately. “Sigma, you go through that one. K and I will go through…”

_ The right door _ , something tells her. 

“The right door. Is that okay?”

Sigma and K both nod.

“Okay. Let’s go.”


	3. K Route: Part 1

Tenmyouji makes the hardest decision he’s ever made. Before the second AB game, he limits himself to five minutes of searching for Quark, and then he goes to the infirmary. Clover is running out of the door with an injection gun in her hand. Tenmyouji grabs her wrist. He knows how this ends. “Clover.”

“What? Let go of me!” Clover says angrily, trying to pull away. Tenmyouji is old, but he’s still strong enough to keep his grip for a little longer.

“You’re about to make a mistake,” Tenmyouji says, and now he needs to tread carefully, because he  _ doesn’t actually know _ what happens in the crew quarters that leads Clover to run into the infirmary and almost get stabbed to death by Dio. But he can guess, because this is Clover. “Listen to me. Alice’s death was a suicide. She had Radical-6.”

“Lies! Alice would  _ never _ kill herself,” Clover yells, finally managing to pull away from Tenmyouji. She runs down the hall and Tenmyouji follows.

“Clover, I know you loved her, but that doesn’t mean you can just accuse innocent people!” Tenmyouji calls out.

“Shut up! What do you know about my relationship with Alice, you old fart?” Clover stops suddenly and turns the injection gun on him. Tenmyouji raises his hands in surrender. “Leave me alone, or I’ll kill you first.”

Fuck. Time to think fast. “You met her in November while driving through Nevada. You asked her out in... June or July. You freaked out about your first date so much that I could hear the ruckus even though I was drunk in the bathroom.”

“Wha...?” Clover’s hands begin to shake. “Who... who are you? How do you know those things?”

“How many people do you know who lived in the bathroom of your apartment?” Tenmyouji asks drily. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I’m a lot older than you remember. But please, Clover, I need you to trust me.”

“Tell me... tell me something only he would know,” Clover says quietly.

Forty five years is a long time, and Tenmyouji’s memory isn’t what it used to be, but there are some things you never forget. “In the captain’s quarters, I very insensitively talked about how gruesome your brother’s supposed death was while you were still mourning him, but that also helped you realize that it wasn’t his corpse in the shower room behind door 3.”

Clover slowly lowers the injection gun and Tenmyouji sighs in relief. “How...? How are you... so old?”

Tenmyouji looks around anxiously. There’s nobody else around, luckily. “The treatment center pods can put people in cold sleep. My guess is, you’ve been in one of those since you were kidnapped. It’s... not 2028 anymore, Clover.”

“Oh...” Tears begin to well up in Clover’s eyes. “Alice... what did you mean about Alice?”

“Radical-6 attacks the brain. Makes you want to kill yourself.” Tenmyouji says it matter-of-factly and tries to push back memories of corpses everywhere, the stench of death inescapable, everyone he knew dying one by one. “I can’t say for sure, but I think that’s what Quark has, too.”

“Quark...?” Clover’s eyes widen and she wipes her tears away. “Th-then... we have to find him, before he...”

Tenmyouji grimaces and the vise around his heart tightens. “Yeah. Look, you can’t tell anyone about all this, okay? I wasn’t supposed to say anything. Zero threatened to kill me and Quark if I did.”

“What the hell? Junp— Tenmyouji, why would you tell me anyway? What if Quark’s—”

“I’m still alive, so he is, too,” Tenmyouji says firmly, not because he knows it but because he has to believe it or he’ll go insane. “Just... don’t ask anymore questions, okay? I don’t want to push it.”

Clover nods.

“Clover! Tenmyouji! There you are. Alice is— never mind, just come to the crew quarters, now!” Dio shouts from the other end of the hall.

“Well, looks like the body’s been discovered,” Tenmyouji says grimly. Clover bites her lip. “Act like you were before. Like you think one of us did it.”

“Right. Okay.” Clover takes a deep breath and sets her face in a mask of despair. “What? What happened to Alice?” she cries out dramatically.

Tenmyouji gives her a disappointed look. “ _ That’s _ the best you can do?”

“W-well, I didn’t have time to think!” Clover protests. “Let’s go. We don’t want to make Dio suspicious.”

“Wait.” Tenmyouji swallows hard. This is the timeline where Dio kills him and Clover. “If something happens to me, I need you to find me. Dead or alive, I have something I’m supposed to give you when this is over.”

“You’re not allowed to die,” Clover says forcefully, waving a finger in his face. “You’re not. Got it?” She takes off towards the crew quarters in a sprint before Tenmyouji can answer.

Tenmyouji doesn’t want to follow. He wants to look for Quark. But he’s made his choice, so he has to stick with it. He follows Clover to the crew quarters. They’re the last to arrive. Clover can’t even look at the body. Tenmyouji’s seen too damn much to be unsettled by a dead body, but he pretends, anyway. “My God…”

“What happened here?” K asks.

The group starts to debate the details of the murder. Clover begins to cry silently, and Tenmyouji thinks it’s probably not an act anymore. Guilt rises in his throat. He could have prevented her death, if only he’d chased after her instead of looking for Quark, if only he’d realized what timeline he was in sooner. Tenmyouji’s life is a constellation of mistakes, and this is just another star in the sky.

“Ten minutes until Ambidex Gates close.”

Tenmyouji snaps out of his spiral of self-hatred just in time to hear Clover yell, “No! I’m not going anywhere! I can’t just… leave her here…”

Tenmyouji considers stepping in to explain to Clover why that’s a stupid idea, but Phi does a pretty bang-up job of it herself, and they all head back to the warehouse. As Tenmyouji is about to head into the AB room, Luna stops him.

“Tenmyouji… are you going to vote ally?” Luna asks.

Shit. Tenmyouji thinks about what he knows about this timeline. When Luna dies, she finds Quark and puts him in the treatment center. Maybe he can trust her. It’s worth a shot. “Look, can I be honest with you for a moment? Quark’s life is in danger, and I don’t know where Quark is or if he’ll ever be able to vote again. I need to get him to 9 points so he can leave.”

“Oh…” Luna’s gaze drops to the floor. “So you want me to vote ally, and you’ll vote betray…”

“This is a lot to ask of you. It’s selfish, and it’s stupid. But I…” Tenmyouji turns away, tears in his eyes. He’s already chosen Clover over Quark once. He doesn’t know what choices he needs to make to get Quark out of here with Clover, but this is the best one he sees right now.

“If you do that, and he opens the door now, you won’t be leaving, either,” Luna says, giving him a worried look. “Are you okay with that?”

“If Quark can get out of here, I don’t care what happens to me,” Tenmyouji says honestly.

Luna looks at him for a moment, then nods. “Okay. Then I… I’ll do it.”

“You will?” Tenmyouji doesn’t even bother to hide his shock.

“Yes. If nobody else gets 9 points this round, then we’ll both have time to get up to 9 afterwards. But if someone does, I want Quark to be able to leave, too,” Luna says, determination in her eyes.

Tenmyouji could cry in her arms right now. “Thank you.”

In the end, it doesn’t end up mattering. Everyone except for Luna votes to betray. Now, there’s a new problem. Quark has a target on his back. Tenmyouji needs to find him before someone does something stupid.

“You chose to betray?” Sigma asks him.

“We chose this outcome together,” Luna cuts in before Tenmyouji can justify his choice. “Since we don’t know where he is, we wanted to ensure that he could leave if any of you got to 9 BP this round.”

“...Yeah. I asked Luna for a favor, and she agreed,” Tenmyouji says.

“You’re an idiot. Now the little bastard can leave whenever he wants, and screw over the rest of us,” Dio spits.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen. I believe that Quark won’t leave Tenmyouji behind,” Luna says firmly.

“I’ll find him and make sure that he doesn’t open the number nine door,” Tenmyouji says. He knows which timeline he’s in now. He’s  _ going _ to make sure that Quark and Clover get out of here.

“We should pair up this time,” Phi suggests, glancing back at the cyan door.

Tenmyouji does some quick thinking. As far as he knows, Dio is going to kill him and Clover if they pair up. The best way to avoid that outcome is… “I’ll go with Dio.”

“Huh? You will?” Phi says, surprise written all over her face.

“Dio said he’s worried K will snap him in half. Shouldn’t have that problem with me. I’m old and weak,” Tenmyouji says.

“I like this idea. If you try to kill me, I can probably overpower you pretty quickly,” Dio says smugly.

“I would like to go with Sigma,” K says, and Sigma accepts without too much conversation.

“That leaves me, Clover, and Luna.” Phi shrugs. “We can be a group of three, then.”

“All right,” Luna says with a smile.

Clover gives Tenmyouji a worried look, and Tenmyouji nods subtly. “Okay. Let’s go.”

“We’ll look behind the cyan and blue doors,” Phi says.

The treatment center is behind the green door. Best to keep Dio away from there, if that’s where Quark really is. “We’ll go through the magenta and red doors, then.”

“That leaves us with yellow and green,” Sigma says.

Nobody voices their dissent, so they split up.

Tenmyouji doesn’t have to wait long for Dio to act. As soon as they’re in the lounge and Tenmyouji turns his back, Dio swings a bottle at his head. He moves out of the way just in time, and the bottle breaks against the counter behind him. The bottle smashes into pieces.

“Hold still, old man. No need to draw this out,” Dio says with a scheming smile. The neck of the broken bottle is still in his hand, and its jagged glass edges make it the perfect weapon. Like a knife.

At least Clover will be safe.

Tenmyouji draws the fight out for as long as he can. The more time he wastes, the less likely Dio is to get another kill. He dodges Dio’s attacks as best as he can, staying on the defensive. But it doesn’t matter. He’s going to lose. He’s too old, too slow, too tired. Dio finally stabs him in the hand with broken glass and throws him behind the bar.

“Well, that was more trouble than it’s worth,” Dio says, leaning down to put a handcuff on Tenmyouji’s right wrist. “But Brother warned me about you, Tenmyouji  _ Junpei _ .” Tenmyouji’s blood runs cold.

“You’re with Free the Soul,” he growls.

“Affirmative. I didn’t want to have to do this, but I can’t let this project succeed, and you know too much. I hope you understand,” Dio says smugly. Tenmyouji wants to punch him in the face, but he doesn’t have the strength.

Dio grabs him by the collar and hoists him to his feet. “Now, it won’t do any good to leave you here. Let’s be a little more  _ creative _ .” He punches Tenmyouji in the stomach, and Tenmyouji collapses to his knees, instantly winded. Something hits him over the head, maybe the globe? Tenmyouji’s vision starts to go dark. 

“Sweet dreams, old man. Time to leave your fate up to chance.”


	4. K Route: Part 2

When Clover’s group gets back to the warehouse, Dio is already there. “Where’s Tenmyouji?” Clover asks demandingly.

“Don’t ask me. Old fart got mad at me for ‘not searching fast enough’ and ran off on his own,” Dio says indifferently.

“We… we have to go find him. Last time someone was alone, they…” Clover’s voice trembles. Alice is dead. She  _ can’t _ let Junpei die, too.

“Maybe he’s still looking. He was really worried about Quark,” Luna says, putting a comforting hand on Clover’s shoulder.

Clover closes her eyes and tries to push away her panic so she can think. Somehow, Junpei had known that she was on her way to kill Luna. He’d known that Alice was dead. But he’d come from the direction of the elevator, so he hadn’t been in the crew quarters yet, which means… what? How had he known Alice was dead? How had he known  _ why _ Alice was dead?

And how can she use that information to figure out where he is now?

Sigma and K run into the warehouse a few minutes later. Dio chews them out for being late. Clover isn’t paying attention to what they’re saying until she hears Quark’s name.

“Quark is in the treatment center, sleeping in one of the treatment pods,” Sigma explains.

The treatment center. So he  _ did _ have Radical-6, then. Junpei had been right. If Quark was in the treatment center, then maybe Junpei…?

Clover waits impatiently for Sigma and K to finish their explanation, then says, “Did you see Tenmyouji at all? Was he in the treatment center?”

Sigma shakes his head. “Nobody else was in there. Just us and Quark.”

“...I want to go look for him. I have a bad feeling about this,” Clover says.

“Wait. There’s something I want to check first,” Sigma says, putting a hand out to stop her from leaving. “It’ll be quick, I promise.”

Clover wants to blow Sigma off and go look for Junpei, but something tells her that whatever Sigma wants to check is important, and… she needs all the information she can get. To avenge Alice, and find Junpei. “Okay. Fine.”

They all walk to the rec room, and Sigma turns off the lights. “Stick your bracelets out,” he says. Clover follows his instructions without resistance. After a moment, Luna does the same. Dio and Phi ask pointless questions. They’re wasting time.

“Just do what he says!” Clover shouts, and Dio and Phi fall silent.

“Clover, is everything all right?” Phi asks.

Oh, right. Clover isn’t supposed to care about Tenmyouji. She racks her brain for another excuse. “I want to find Alice’s killer. So stop talking and stick out your wrist so we can  _ leave _ .”

Finally, Dio and Phi stick out their wrists with the underside of their bracelets facing upwards. Sigma takes a spray bottle of something and sprays it across all five of their wrists. Instantly, Dio jerks his arm back. “Gah! Cold!” he says, half annoyed and half surprised.

Clover looks at the remaining four wrists. She doesn’t know what Sigma’s looking for, but she wants this to be over with  _ fast _ .

“Nothing’s glowing,” Sigma muses, then looks over at Dio. “All of our bracelets are clean.”

“That leaves Dio,” K says.

“Wait… what are you talking about?” Phi asks, ever the inquisitive one.

“I’ll explain in a minute,” Sigma says, “Just show me your bracelet, Dio.”

Dio doesn’t move. Dio, who had gone with Tenmyouji. Dio, who is now acting suspicious. 

“Show him your damn bracelet!” Clover yells, and she jumps onto Dio’s back in an attempt to force his arm out. Dio tries to shake her off, but she’s had plenty of practice pinning Aoi down despite the fact that he’s taller than her, so she’s able to keep her grip. Sigma takes advantage of the moment to grab Dio’s wrist and flip it upwards.

“I knew it! His bracelet is glowing!” Sigma says excitedly.

Dio makes a break for the exit, even with Clover on his back. “Oh no you don’t!” Clover yanks down on his hair, throwing off his center of balance. This gives K enough time to wrap his arms around Dio’s knees. “K, he’s all yours!” Clover hops off of Dio’s back, and K smoothly pins Dio to the ground. Dio struggles against him, but it’s no use.

“Let me  _ go _ ! Get off of me, you fuckers!” Dio yells. 

“Dio… you killed the old lady,” Sigma says slowly.

The old lady. Someone who Junpei knew, judging by how affected he’d been by seeing her dead body.

“No! You don’t understand! This is all some kind of mistake!” Dio insists. Clover kicks him in the shin. “Shit! What the hell?”

“Where’s Tenmyouji?” she asks, her voice low and menacing.

“I don’t know! Why the hell would I know that?” Dio says angrily. Sigma is explaining something to Luna and Phi, but Clover doesn’t care to hear it. If Sigma and K think Dio killed the old lady, that’s enough for her.

Clover kneels down and pulls Dio’s head up by his hair. “Where’s. Tenmyouji.”

“I told you already. I have no fucking clue,” Dio yells.

“We’ve got you, Dio. You might as well confess,” Sigma says firmly.

Dio groans. “Okay, fine, you got me. I killed the old bitch and took her bracelet. But that’s  _ it _ . I didn’t kill Alice, and I don’t know where Tenmyouji is.”

“Are you Zero?” Phi asks.

“No! I was under orders. I was sent here to— to do something,” Dio splutters.

“To do what?” Sigma cries, clearly very thrown off by this whole situation. Hmph, novice. You can’t run an interrogation if you yourself are flustered.

“Who gave you this order?” K asks much more calmly.

“I’ll die before I tell you,” Dio snarls.

“So your orders were more important than Alice’s life?” Sigma asks angrily.

“I  _ told _ you, I had nothing to do with that,” Dio shouts in frustration. “Now, let me go! I’m telling the truth, I swear to god.”

“Either way, you’re still a killer,” Phi points out. “You just haven’t killed as many people.”

“I agree. We should restrain him somehow,” K says.

Clover wants to kill him, but she forces herself to calm down. The last time she jumped to conclusions, she almost killed Aoi and Seven for no reason. “If Tenmyouji’s dead, you’ll be next. Got it?”

Dio pauses for a moment, and then a sly smile slides onto his face. “Good luck finding him. You’re on a time limit, after all.”

Nope, forget restraint. Clover punches Dio in the face.

“Clover.” Luna puts a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s go look for Tenmyouji. We’ll find him, I’m sure of it.”

“Phi, K, and I will handle Dio,” Sigma says reassuringly. K is already hoisting Dio over his shoulder, and they seem to have a plan on how to restrain him.

“Fine. Let’s go, Luna,” Clover says shakily as she stands up. “He and Dio were supposed to search the red door, right? Let’s start with that.”

Clover runs out of the rec room and towards the red door. If Luna’s surprised by her sudden increase in pace, she doesn’t show it; she runs alongside Clover. “Tenmyouji!” Clover calls out as she runs on the off-chance that he’s in the hallway somewhere.

They get to the pantry and look around. Tenmyouji is nowhere to be found.

“Maybe he’s gone back to the warehouse,” Luna suggests. “That’s where we were supposed to meet up, right?”

“Yeah.” Clover swallows her growing panic and runs off towards the warehouse. It’s a bit of a trek from the pantry. They get to the warehouse just as Sigma, Phi, and K are about to leave. Dio isn’t with them, so he must’ve been dealt with.

“Did you find him?” Sigma asks.

Clover shoots him a dirty look. “What kind of question is that? He’d be  _ with us _ if we did.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry,” Sigma says sheepishly.

Phi looks down at her watch. “We have fifty minutes until the doors open. We still have time to look for him.”

“Um… I can stay here,” Luna volunteers. “That way, if he comes back, he’ll know where everyone is.”

“Great idea. The rest of us can pair up and look for him,” Sigma says.

“Ah, just a moment. Clover, you will be needing this.” K hands Clover a bracelet. It’s the red solo bracelet. Clover’s eyes widen. “Not to worry. Quark is not dead. We do not know how his bracelet was removed, but you can use it to get through the Chromatic Door with Tenmyouji.”

Relief floods through Clover. Quark’s not dead. Thank goodness. “R-right. Thanks.”

“Let’s try to be back five minutes before the Chromatic Doors open,” Phi suggests, and everyone nods. “All right. Clover, let’s go.”

Clover doesn’t have to be told twice. She practically runs out of the room and heads towards the elevator. Phi follows along, seemingly having no objections. As they’re standing in the elevator, Phi finally speaks. “Do you know him? Tenmyouji?”

“I… yeah. I didn’t recognize him at first, but we know each other. He’s… really important to me. I don’t want to lose him, too.” Clover’s lower lip wobbles, and she sniffs back her tears. No. Junpei is alive. He has to be.

“We’ll find him,” Phi says firmly. Clover nods.

The elevator opens, and Clover heads to the lounge. It’s the closest to the elevator, and Dio and Junpei had searched this room, so it’s the best place to start. Clover walks into the room, and Phi walks in behind her.

Everything seems to be in order. There’s bottles on the shelves behind the bar, there’s a globe on the table, and the sofa is untouched.

Phi frowns and walks over to the bar. “There were more bottles when we were here last time.”

Since Phi has taken the bar, Clover goes over to the table, where the globe is sitting. She tries to spin it, and the round part falls off the base. “Oops.” She starts to put the globe back together when she notices a slight indentation on the side of the globe. “Hey, Phi, was the globe always like this?” she asks, gesturing to the place where the side is caved in slightly.

“No. Something happened here,” Phi says, her tone suddenly serious. “There’s a liquid stain on the floor and there’s bits of broken glass everywhere.”

Clover’s chest tightens and she closes her eyes. Hope, faith, love, luck. She has to have faith. “But Tenmyouji’s not here. Maybe he was able to get away.”

Phi starts to speak, then hesitates. “Let’s look around the rest of the floor. Maybe we’ll find something.”

They head to the infirmary next. The room is empty aside for the old woman, and nothing seems out of place. The pit of dread in Clover’s stomach grows.

“The crew quarters,” Clover whispers desperately.

“Let’s go through the warehouse, just in case. He might be in there,” Phi says gently, putting a hand on Clover’s shoulder. Clover nods numbly.

They don’t spend too much time in the warehouse. There’s no immediate sign of Tenmyouji, and when Clover calls out his name, they don’t hear a response anywhere. They can always look closer later, anyway, if they need to.

They enter the crew quarters. The area is dead silent. “I’ll look at rooms 1 and 2. You look at doors 3 and 4,” Phi says.

“Thank you,” Clover says quietly, her gaze briefly flitting to the number 2 door. She didn’t want to see Alice’s body again. Not if she could help it.

She starts to open the door to the third room, then stops. The handle is turning, but it’s heavy, like…

“Tenmyouji! Are you in there?” Clover yells through the door. She waits, heart pounding in her chest. Please be in there, please be in there, please—

Clover hears coughing on the other side of the door. She turns the handle carefully and opens the door slowly. As she begins to close the door, her stomach flips. Junpei is cuffed to the back of the door, hanging limply by his right arm, in a small pool of blood. The chain of the handcuffs is looped around the handle over and over again so that he can’t just slide the cuffs off the door.

“Junpei!” Clover kneels down next to him and looks him over. His hand is bleeding, although the blood has started to clot naturally, and he has a large bruise on the side of his head. There’s a scalpel jammed into his left leg, and his pants are soaked through with blood from the wound. But his bracelet— his bracelet is on. “Junpei, please hang on. We’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

Junpei’s eyes flit open for a moment. “...Clover?” he mumbles.

“Yeah. It’s me. Your partner, remember? We share a destiny?” she says, waving her bracelet in front of him for emphasis.

Junpei chuckles weakly. “Oh, yeah. I guess… we do.”

Clover starts to examine the handcuffs with a frown. She doesn’t have anything to pick the lock with. “Quark’s okay. He’s in a pod in the treatment center. Dio’s been locked up somewhere, too.”

“Good…” Junpei coughs again and his eyelids droop.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep! You’re not allowed to die, remember?” Clover says sharply.

“Mmm.” Junpei opens his eyes halfway and meets her gaze. “I’ll try… not to...”

Clover pokes her head out of the half open door. “Phi!” she calls out. “I found him! I need to pick a lock.”

Phi emerges from the second cabin a moment later and slips into the third room through the opening in the door. “Here. Alice had some bobby pins in her hair.”

Alice is saving them even in death. Clover owes her big time. She grabs the bobby pin and fiddles with the lock. A couple minutes later, the handcuffs click and Junpei’s arm falls out of the metal cuffs. Phi kneels down next to him. “Do you think you can walk if we support you? I don’t think either of us can carry you by ourselves.”

“Maybe…” Junpei’s face twists in pain as Phi helps him stand up. Clover spots another open wound on his right side that she’d missed initially; he’d been pressed against the door, so she hadn’t been able to see it. Clover darts to his side and puts his other arm around her, doing her best to support as much of his weight as she can.

“Let’s get him to the treatment center. If we can take Quark out of the pod for a little bit, we might be able to heal his wounds,” Phi says urgently.

Clover nods and ignores the blood that’s smearing on her clothes. She’s gotten this far. She can’t let Junpei die now.

It’s not too hard for the two of them to support Junpei. For one thing, despite being taller than both of him, he’s actually quite skinny and frail. Clover thinks about her Junpei, the Junpei who hardly ate anything on a good day and skipped meals on a bad one, and her throat begins to choke up with tears. “You should eat better, you idiot,” she says quietly.

Junpei’s in too much pain to say anything, but he flicks her lightly with his finger, and she smiles.

When they get to the elevator, they run into Sigma. “Move. We need to go down,” Phi says forcefully.

“The elevator was on floor B when I got here. I’m waiting for it,” Sigma says. Sure enough, the elevator dings a second later. “Here. Let me help you.”

Phi swaps out with Sigma as the elevator travels downward. “I’ll run ahead and get the pod ready,” she says as the elevator opens, and then she bolts off in the direction of the treatment center. Clover and Sigma follow behind at a much slower pace, careful not to jostle Junpei too much. Every once in a while, he groans quietly in pain, and Clover’s heart clenches.

“We’re almost there, okay? You’re going to be fine,” Clover says soothingly.

Junpei taps her once to signal that he’s heard her, that he’s still awake, that he’s still with her. He’s breathing too heavily to speak, and his forehead is slick with sweat. He looks like he’s already dead.

Clover comforts herself with the thought that Junpei had looked like a zombie for most of the time that Clover had lived with him. He’d pulled through then, and he’ll pull through now. He has Quark to take care of.

When they get to the treatment center, two of the pods are open. Clover’s eyes widen as her eyes fall on the one closest to her. Dio has his hands around his throat, and his face is frozen in an expression of permanent desperation. “Dio’s… dead…”

“He was like this when I got here. I don’t know what happened,” Phi says nonchalantly. “Here. Put Tenmyouji in pod 1. I took Quark out for a little bit since the other pods don’t seem to be functional.”

“Quark…” Junpei gasps.

“He’ll be fine. We won’t let anything happen to him,” Clover says reassuringly as she and Sigma lower Junpei into the pod. “I promise.”

As the pod lid closes, Clover finally lets her anxiety overwhelm her and she collapses to the floor. “Whoa!” Sigma cries out, running over to her. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just… relieved,” Clover says. She stands up slowly. “How much time do we have left?”

“Twenty minutes until the Chromatic Doors open,” Sigma answers.

“It looks like Tenmyouji’s treatment should finish by then. He won’t be fully healed, but he’ll be stable,” Phi says.

“Thank goodness,” Clover says quietly. She looks over at Quark. He’s peacefully sleeping, blissfully unaware of everything that just happened. If he wakes up, though… Clover remembers Junpei’s words. Radical-6 compels a person to kill themselves. She won’t let Quark do that.

Phi frowns. “Hold on. It looks like he has Radical-6, according to this. The pod can treat his other injuries, but it can’t treat Radical-6.”

Clover’s heart drops into her stomach. First Quark, then Alice, now Junpei. It makes sense. He’d been stabbed with the same scalpel that Alice had killed herself with. Junpei had said there is a cure, but that it’s hard to obtain… No. She’ll worry about that later. “We can deal with that later. I’m just glad he’s alive.”

“On the other hand…” Sigma walks over to Dio’s pod. “What happened here?”

“Someone turned the oxygen off on his pod. He suffocated to death,” Phi says evenly. “He was already like that when I got here.”

Sigma frowns. “Quark probably didn’t do it, since he’s still asleep. Clover couldn’t have done it because she was with someone for the whole time between when we put Dio in here and when he died. I could have done it when I left the lounge because I left K there alone, and Phi could have done it in the few minutes before we got to the door. Luna has been alone this whole time, so she could have done it, too.”

“What about K?” Clover asks, approaching Dio’s body with some caution. He looked like he’d suffered until his last breath. Maybe Clover’s a horrible person, but she’s glad that he did.

Clover starts looking for his bracelet as Phi and Sigma talk in the background. It’s not around his wrist, but it’s not just right to the side, either.

“He was resting in the lounge. He was feeling dizzy,” Sigma says. “I guess he could have done it. I haven’t been back to the lounge to see if he’s still there.”

“The elevator was already down on this floor when you tried to call it, right?” Phi asks.

“Yeah. It was.”

“Then it has to be K. All three of us were on floor A, but someone had used the elevator to get to floor B. Luna wouldn’t have needed to use the elevator. It would have just drawn attention to her,” Phi reasons.

“I guess, but…” Sigma shakes his head. “Why would K kill Dio? He was the one who first suggested restraining Dio instead of killing him.”

Phi shrugs. “Maybe something changed.”

Clover finds the bracelet hiding underneath Dio’s body. She pulls it out, and her eyes widen. The display is completely shattered. “Um, guys? I think… we have a problem.” She shows them the bracelet.

“Shit!” Phi says, snatching the bracelet from Clover. “Without this, K and I can’t…”

“What the hell? There’s no reason for K to kill Dio and then sign his own death warrant,” Sigma says, confused.

Clover shakes her head. “I found it under his body. I think Dio smashed it himself as he was dying. You know, if I die, I’m taking you down with me.”

“Well, now Phi and K are…” Sigma trails off. Clover doesn’t want to think about it. K killed Dio, so Dio killing him is fitting, at least. But Phi didn’t deserve to die.

Clover doesn’t want to think. She needs to stay busy. Since she’s already gotten her hands dirty, she starts to search Dio’s body for the injection gun he’d taken from the treatment center safe. It might be useful, after all, and Dio doesn’t need it anymore since he’s dead. She finds the gun in his pocket, exactly where she’d seen him put it. The vial in the gun is still full. 

“Neostigmine...” Clover has heard the name before, but try as she might, Clover can’t remember what it does.

“Wait.” Sigma turns to Clover. “What did you say?”

“Neostigmine? That’s what’s in this injection gun we found in the treatment center,” Clover says, holding the gun out to him.

“That’s it! This can counteract tubocurarine!” Sigma says excitedly. As soon as he says it, Clover knows he’s right. She vaguely remembers Light telling her about it.

“There’s only enough for one person, though,” Clover points out.

Sigma’s face falls. “Oh, right. We can’t save Phi  _ and _ K.”

“Let’s take things one at a time. First, we need to ask K if he killed Dio. Sigma, can you bring Luna and K here?” Phi says calmly, as if her life isn’t now in danger. Sigma hands Phi the injection gun and leaves the room.

Clover doesn’t know what to do, now. All there  _ is _ to do is wait for Tenmyouji to wake up. She paces back and forth restlessly, trying to sort everything out in her head. Radical-6 was real and had been released. Free the Soul had been planning a bioterrorist attack, as far as SOIS knew. Dio had been sent here on orders to do something, and it involved killing the old woman. Tenmyouji was actually Junpei, except he was an old man.

Clover wishes Alice was still alive, or that Light was here. They’d both know how to make sense of all this.

Sigma returns with K and Luna a few minutes later. Luna gasps when she sees Dio’s body. “Oh my goodness… he…”

“He died of suffocation. Someone turned the oxygen off in his pod,” Phi says bluntly. She holds up his bracelet. “We think that he smashed the display on his bracelet as he was dying, so now K and I can’t get through the white doors.”

Clover looks at K, then remembers that she can’t tell a damn thing about how he’s reacting because he’s wearing full body armor.

“Any of us could have killed him except Clover, Tenmyouji, and Quark. Clover was with either Phi or me the whole time, Tenmyouji was on death’s doorstep, and Quark has been asleep in the pod,” Sigma says calmly.

“I was in the warehouse the whole time,” Luna says. “I can’t prove it, though… Sigma was the only one who entered after you all left.”

Phi nods. “K, what about you?”

“I was resting in the lounge. I suppose I cannot prove that I was there the whole time, either,” K says slowly. “What about you, Sigma, and you, Phi?”

“I had some time where I was alone after I left the lounge. I ran into Phi and Clover carrying Tenmyouji when I went to use the elevator.” Sigma and Phi exchange a glance. Clover bits her lip but stays quiet. The elevator is the only trump card they have.

“I was only alone for a little while. I ran ahead to the treatment center to prepare the pod for Tenmyouji. Dio was already like this when I got here,” Phi says.

“Hmm. So none of us have alibis,” K muses.

Behind Phi, the display for the first pod changes. “Oh. He’s stabilized. I’ll let him out and put Quark back in.”

Clover waits anxiously as Phi messes with the display. A couple of minutes go by, and then finally, the pod opens. Junpei sits up slowly with a groan and rubs his eyes. He’s alive. He’s  _ alive _ . Clover wants to hug him right now, but he looks like he might shatter into pieces if she does.

“Welcome back to the world of the living,” Phi says sarcastically.

Junpei shakes his head as if to clear it, then looks over at the floor where Quark is sleeping. “Quark. Is he…”

“He’s okay. He’s asleep, like he’s been given some sort of anesthetic,” Sigma says. “Here. Let me help you up.”

Junpei grumbles but takes Sigma’s hand and steps out of the pod. Almost immediately, his knees buckle, and Sigma catches him before he falls to the floor.

“Uh, maybe you should sit down for a moment,” Sigma says, lowering Junpei to the floor slowly.

Junpei sighs, but he doesn’t protest. He must be really, really tired to not put up a fight.

“Okay. Back to Dio. We have…” Sigma presses the buttons on the side of his watch. “...seven minutes until the Chromatic Doors open.”

“But won’t Phi and K be…” Luna trails off, her eyes darting between the two of them.

“Yeah. We can’t pass through a white door. We’ll be penalized,” Phi says nonchalantly. Wisely, she does not mention the injection gun.

Sigma clears his throat. “There’s one thing I haven’t mentioned yet. When I went to use the elevator, it was already down on floor B. I had to wait for it to come back up to floor A.”

“Which means someone used the elevator to go down to floor B before Sigma,” Phi adds.

“Phi, Clover, Tenmyouji, and I were all waiting for the elevator, so we’re not the ones who sent it down to floor B. And Luna was already down here. Unless she came up to floor A and then went down again, she wasn’t the one who used the elevator.” Sigma turns to K. “Well?”

K sighs. “Fine. I see no reason to hide it, as my life will be terminated shortly regardless. I killed Dio.”

“Why?” Luna asks, horrified.

“He killed someone very important to me.”

“Who?” Junpei spoke up, startling everyone.

“The old woman we found. I… remembered some things about my life. And about her.” K averts his gaze. “She was… like a mother to me.”

Junpei raises an eyebrow. “Huh. Didn’t think she had it in her.”

“Wait, wait, do  _ you _ know the old woman?” Sigma asks incredulously.

“Yeah. Her name’s Akane Kurashiki. She and I went to school together. The last time I saw her was when we were 22 years old,” Junpei says. It’s barely there, but Clover can hear the bitterness in his voice.

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Sigma cries.

“Hmph. Forgive me if I don’t feel like spilling my life story to a bunch of strangers,” Junpei says grumpily.

Clover gets the feeling that he didn’t say anything because it would’ve given away his identity to her almost instantly.

Phi places Quark in the pod and closes it. “We should go. We have five minutes.”

“What about Quark?” Junpei asks, eyeing the pod.

“His bracelet’s off. We don’t know why, since he’s obviously alive,” Phi says bluntly. “Okay, all set. Let’s move.”

“Wait. What about… K?” Luna says quietly.

“If he’s gonna die, he might as well do it downstairs,” Junpei says, rising to his feet slowly. Clover instinctively reaches out a hand to steady him. “For what it’s worth, if you hadn’t killed Dio, I would have. He’s a state-sanctioned terrorist.”

“He’s a  _ what _ ?” Poor Sigma. Every bombshell Junpei drops just seems to fry his brain.

“We can talk about it later. Let’s  _ go _ ,” Phi says insistently.

After one last look at Quark, they leave the treatment center and head back to warehouse B. The Chromatic Doors open just as they arrive.

“Uh, so, which doors do we go through?” Sigma says, looking at all three doors one by one. “They’re all the same color, so…”

“We can only choose two of them, so we should choose wisely,” Phi says.

“Phi…” Luna looks at Phi sadly.

Phi sighs and pulls out the injection gun. “This is neostigmine. It can counteract tubocurarine. But there’s only one dose.”

“Then you should use it,” K says gently. “I’m glad that my selfish actions will not kill you, after all.”

“But K—”

“K can’t use it anyway. He’s got a metal suit on,” Phi says flatly.

K sits down on the floor. “You need not worry about me. If this is the consequence of my actions, then I must face it.”

Clover begins to tune out the conversation after that. Junpei isn’t paying attention, either. He’s staring intently at the white doors. Clover walks over to him. “Do you have a favorite door?”

“Yeah. The one with the number nine on it,” Junpei says drily.

“Oh, come  _ on _ . You know what I mean,” Clover says, pouting.

Junpei smiles. “Sure I do, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to mess with you.” Clover considers jabbing her elbow into his ribs, then remembers that he’d been injured there.

“So, Dio’s a terrorist?” Clover asks.

“He’s with Free the Soul,” Junpei answers. “Or, at least, that’s what he said before he tried to kill me.”

“Well, I don’t know why he’d lie about  _ that _ ,” Clover points out. “Which door should we go through?”

Junpei closes his eyes and puts a hand to his head. “We don’t usually get this far. I’m trying to remember. Let me think.”

“We don’t… usually…” Clover trails off as the implication of Junpei’s words hits her. Usually, they  _ die _ . “How many times…”

“Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to,” Junpei says grimly.

Clover doesn’t know what to think about  _ that _ .

The PA dings and the announcer’s voice echoes through the warehouse. “Three minutes until Chromatic Doors close.”

“Which doors should we go through?” Sigma and Luna walk over to the doors, apparently done with whatever conversation they’d been having.

“Does it really matter?” Sigma says with a frown.

“Of course it does! If there’s something important behind one of these doors and we don’t go through that door, we may not find it,” Clover says.

Junpei opens his eyes. “I think… Sigma, you and Luna should go through the door in the middle. Clover and I will go through the door on the right. Ideally, Phi would be with you, but… we can deal with that later.”

“Huh? What do you mean?” Sigma asks.

Junpei shakes his head. “It’s nothing. Let’s go, Clover.”

“Um, r-right.” Clover follows Junpei over to the door on the right. She takes one last look behind her and sees Phi sitting next to K, injection gun at the ready. She hopes Phi will be okay.

She and Junpei walk through the door, and it closes behind them.


	5. Clover Route: Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (bangs on door) Let! Clover! Be an esper!
> 
> I've decided that the canon "the strongest esper in the room absorbs the others" explanation is BS, given how ZTD goes down. I think it's more accurate to say that all the espers simultaneously get a power boost from each other.

Clover and K don’t talk to each other as they stand in front of the secondary door, waiting. Clover can’t stop thinking about Junpei. Why was he old? Why was he so willing to sacrifice himself for her?  _ Why was he so stupid _ ?

“Did you know him?” K asks as they start looking around the Director’s Office.

“Yeah, I… I knew him really well. He was…” Clover doesn’t even know what words she can use that will make sense to K. He was like a brother to her, but saying that might give K the wrong impression because of their age difference. “...like family to me,” she decides to say.

“Ah. I see,” K says almost mechanically. Clover wonders if K has a family. If K’s family is waiting for him right now.

She doesn’t want to read whatever’s inside the envelope that Junpei gave her. She just knows that there’s something heartbreaking in there.

“K, do you have a family? Or, um, do you remember your family?” Clover asks. She’s messing with the business cards now, mindlessly slotting them in using the picture on the back to guide her.

“I have remembered quite a bit, actually. My father is a scientist, and I do not have a mother, although the old woman we found in the AB room was like a mother to me for a few years. And…” K pauses noticeably, then continues. “I believe that I may have grown up in this facility.”

“Grown up here, huh…” The mysteries kept coming. Clover doesn’t have the brainpower right now to decode them. Just because she’s stopped crying doesn’t mean she isn’t still wholly devastated. The only thing keeping her moving is the fact that she promised Junpei she’d look after Quark. And that means she has to get out of here.

“If I may ask, why is it that you and Tenmyouji did not ever mention knowing each other? You did not conceal your relationship with Alice, but you hid your relationship with him,” K says. Damn it, he’s sharp.

“I didn’t recognize him. I think he expected that, so he didn’t push it. He told me who he was when I was taking him to the treatment center to see Quark,” Clover says, face downcast.

“Can you be sure about his identity?” K asks. Clover knows it’s more out of curiosity than suspicion, but she still wants to yell at K that yes, she knows how her family behaves and thinks. Instead, she pulls out the picture that Junpei had with him.

“He had a picture from… a long time ago,” Clover says, showing the picture to K. “That’s him right there, trying to walk out of the frame.”

“He looks a great deal younger. No wonder you didn’t recognize him.” K pats Clover on the shoulder. “I am truly sorry for your loss. It must be difficult to lose two people in one day.”

“I’m sorry for yours, too,” Clover says, tucking the picture back into her boot. God, she wished she had secure pockets. Damn girls’ clothing for being so worthless.

They work in silence for a while. None of the puzzles in this room are particularly difficult, and Clover has figured out what the word on the wall spells before they even finish putting everything together. Clover finds a tablet in a secret room and inputs the password. A moment later, the safe password pops up onto the screen.

“Got it. Let’s get out of here, K,” Clover says, waving the tablet at him.

“Excellent.” K puts the password into the safe while Clover watches. The door clicks open when they insert the key, and they’re about to leave when—

A disk in the corner lights up, and a hologram appears. Clover gasps.

“Sigma…?”

“I am Zero,” the hologram says. Clover’s whole body begins to shake with anger and her blood runs cold. How could Sigma do this to all of them? Because of Sigma, half of her family is dead. Because of Sigma…

_ It’s more complicated _ .

Clover hears Junpei’s voice in her head. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and  _ focuses _ . She’s a transmitter by nature. If she’s lucky enough to have a resonant event with Junpei, she’s going to take it for all it’s worth.

_ What do you mean? _ Clover sends out to the field, hoping she can connect. She hasn’t been able to all day. But maybe… that was Junpei’s fault?

_ I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out right now. But I know there’s something going on here. I’ve met Sigma before _ . Junpei’s voice is uncertain. It’s also a lot younger than the Junpei who just died in front of her.

_ How old are you _ ? Clover asks.

_ Forty one. I’ve been watching through your eyes since I died in front of you. _

Leave it to Junpei to save her even from beyond the grave. Or, well, before he died.

_ Glad that your death created a resonant event _ , Clover says drily.

_ It’s your fault, not mine. I just plugged in to where I felt the resonance. Apparently you care THAT much about me. I’m touched _ .

_ You’re an asshole. _

_ Not even a thank you for saving your life, huh? Classic Clover. _

Clover realizes she hasn’t been paying attention at all to what Zero Sr. has been saying. She tunes in just in time to hear him talk about termites. What the hell?

Zero Sr. says a password for a number one bomb. Clover doesn’t even know what a number one bomb is, but she can feel Junpei taking interest in it.

K turns to Clover with a frown on his masked face. “It seems that Sigma is Zero Sr. This is most troubling.”

“Either Sigma’s a better actor than I thought he was, or something else is going on here. Let’s keep this between the two of us for now, okay?”

K nods. “Let us go back to warehouse B. Hopefully, Phi is still there.”

When they get to warehouse B, Phi is still asleep on the floor. Her chest is moving up and down steadily, so she’s not dead. Good. Clover sits down next to her. All they can do now is wait for Sigma.

_ Hey, Junpei, why are you here? I mean, I don’t want you to leave or anything, but what are you doing? _

Junpei doesn’t respond immediately, but Clover knows he hasn’t left. She can still feel him there.

_ I’m trying to map timelines to choices so I can figure out the best way to get you and Quark out of here alive _ . _ I need as much information as possible because Akane’s going to inject me with a larger dose of Soporil to try and erase as much of my memory as possible. _

Clover’s anger flares.  _ How much of your life have you spent doing this, Junpei _ ?

_ It’s not like there’s much else to do, Clover. The world has been completely decimated by Radical-6. _ Junpei’s voice is so thin, so weary. Clover has so many questions but none of them would be fair to ask. He sounds so tired.

What happened to him?

Clover knows she can’t change the past, but she tries anyway.  _ I don’t want you wasting your life just to get me out of here _ .

_ Think of it as a hobby to replace drinking myself to sleep, _ Junpei says wryly.

_ Because this is any healthier than that was? _ Clover says sharply.

_ Don’t worry. Aoi cuts me off after a certain time every night _ .

“Clover, is something wrong? You look very concerned,” K says.

Clover has no idea how Junpei is able to juggle his hallucinations and reality. Paying attention to two things at once is really hard. “Yeah. I’m okay. I’m just… thinking.”

_ How is Akane involved in all of this? _ Clover asks.

_ Search the old lady’s body and you’ll know _ .

_ That’s cryptic as hell. _

_ Just do it, okay? I want to confirm something I think I saw in another timeline. It’s hard to keep track of all this information and my memory is absolute shit. _

Sigma runs into the room with Quark slung over his shoulder. “I found Axelavir, two bottles. We can cure Phi and Quark!”

_ Ask Sigma if there’s a way to make more. _

“Do you think there’s a way to make more Axelavir with what we have?” Clover says as if she’s thinking aloud.

“Why would we need to do that?” K asks.

What a great question that Junpei hadn’t given her the answer to. Okay, think. Quark got sick first. Then, Alice was found dead by Luna. Luna had said that Alice was sick with Radical-6, but Clover hadn’t believed her at the time. Except now she’d seen Phi try to kill herself, too. “Maybe we’ve caught Radical-6, too, and we just don’t know it yet.”

“Ah. That is somewhat worrisome indeed,” K says, stroking his metallic chin.

Sigma stares into space for a moment, then his eyes widen. “The laboratory! It has an… IG replicator. It can replicate the immunoglobulin in the Axelavir.”

Clover nods and pretends to understand. “Nobody went to the laboratory, though.”

“Yeah… how do I know that…?” Sigma frowns.

_ Is Sigma an esper _ ? Clover asks.

_ I have no clue. It’s not exactly something you say when you first meet a person. Hi, my name’s Sigma, and I’m an esper, and now I’m going to talk only to Akane and Phi, and I’m going to ignore everyone else. _

_ Someone sounds a little bitter _ , Clover says, amused.

_ I wasn’t able to talk to Akane until Sigma and Phi were forcibly split up from her. And considering I looked for her for a whole damn year, I was a little pissed. _

“Phi has to vote, so we should cure Phi and put Quark back in the treatment pod,” K reasons.

“All right, sounds good. I’ll go to the treatment center. You guys take Phi to warehouse A and I’ll meet you there,” Sigma says.

Clover takes one of the vials of Axelavir and the injection gun from Sigma and administers the Axelavir to Phi. She’s no nurse or anything, but she’s already proven today that she can use an injection gun. Once she’s done, K picks Phi up, and the two of them (three of them?) head back up to warehouse A, making sure to avoid the infirmary at all costs.

Wait. She has to search the old woman’s body.

“K, can you watch over Phi for me? There’s something I need to do,” Clover says, voice trembling.

“Certainly. May I ask where you are going?”

“Infirmary. I want to see if the old lady has anything on her that might give us a clue.”

K pauses, then stands up. “Let me go instead.”

Clover isn’t going to argue with that. She doesn’t want to see his body again. “Thank you…”

“Not at all. I wish to see her, too. One last time,” K says, a hint of mourning in his voice.

“C-can you…” Clover forces her tears back. “Can you also check Tenmyouji?”

“Yes, I will,” K says softly, and he walks through the yellow door.

_ I’m sorry _ , Junpei says in her head.

_ Don’t lie. You’d drop dead in an instant if it meant saving me. _

_ I’m not sorry for what I did. I’m sorry that I had to do it. If I’d gotten there sooner, maybe... _

_ It’s not your fault. If you weren’t timeline crawling right now, you wouldn’t have even known to go there. _

Clover pulls the envelope out of her boot and opens it. She has some time to kill, she might as well. There are three letters, from Aoi, Light, and Junpei. Clover reads Light’s letter first.

It’s horrifying.

With shaking hands, she reads Aoi’s letter next. Thank goodness that at least one of the three of them had some common sense to tell her that Light is  _ alive _ . She’s going to slap Light when she gets back. How dare he make her think that he’s dead  _ again _ ? ...No, Light had probably thought he was going to die. She should be grateful that he’s alive.

Next, she reads Junpei’s letter.

That’s how Sigma comes to find her sobbing on the floor of warehouse A and clutching the last piece of Junpei that she has left. She doesn’t even notice him.

“Hey, uh, are you okay?” Sigma asks. 

It’s a dumb question. Clover doesn’t answer it.

Sigma sits down next to her. “Well, if you want to talk about it…”

Clover just hands him Junpei’s letter. She doesn’t think she can.

After a moment, Sigma hands the letter back to her. She folds it up and puts it in the envelope. “So he was… like family to you?”

“He waited  _ forty five years _ to see me, and then he…” Clover sniffs and rubs her face with her hand. “My brother is  _ still _ waiting for me. He had Radical-6 for ten years. He wanted to  _ kill himself _ for  _ ten years _ .”

“He must be really strong-willed,” Sigma says gently.

“He’s the best big brother. He’s so smart, and he’s always protected me even when we were in really scary situations. He ran away from home with me, and he worked with me and Alice even though he didn’t want to just so he could help me get adjusted to the job and— and he didn’t deserve this!” Clover says, frustrated tears streaming down her face. She misses Light. She wants so badly to erase all the pain he must’ve faced over the last forty five years.

“Forty five years…” Sigma trails off. Clover hasn’t fully digested this piece of information, either.  _ Forty five years _ .

“I knew that something was off as soon as Junpei told me who he was,” Clover says quietly. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”

Next to Clover, Phi stirs and opens her eyes. She sits up slowly and looks around for a moment, then frowns. “Why are we in the warehouse?”

“Uh, the infirmary is kind of messy right now,” Sigma says quickly.

As if summoned by the mention of the infirmary, K walks through the yellow door. He has something in his hand.

“Clover, I found this note in the old woman’s pocket. It is addressed to Junpei Tenmyouji,” K says, handing the letter to her. “And this ID card was on her as well. It says ‘Kurashiki.’ On the back is the word ‘JUMPYDOLL.’ It seems to be a password of some sort.”

“Akane…” Clover’s eyes widen.

_ Shit. That’s what I thought. _ Junpei’s voice startles her, and she almost drops the note. She forgot that he was there.

“Does the name ring a bell?” K asks.

“Akane Kurashiki. She was… she and Junpei, um, Tenmyouji, were in love a long time ago. I live with her brother, my brother, and Junpei.”

“Well? What does it say?” Phi asks.

“Given that they are both dead now, I believe you are the best qualified person to read this,” K says gently.

Clover hesitates. Does she have the right to read a note from Akane to Junpei? It feels wrong.

_ Just read it _ , Junpei says impatiently.

_ Still in love _ ? Clover teases.

_ I don’t know. It’s complicated. _

_ Has it ever not been _ ? __

Clover unfolds the note and reads it aloud so K, Sigma, and Phi don’t have to wait in suspense.

“Dear Junpei, there is a good chance that I will die in the execution of this plan. In fact, there is a good chance that you will not read this through your own eyes, but through Clover’s.”

_ Damn, does Akane know everything _ ? Junpei grumbles.

“What does she mean by that?” Sigma asks.

Clover hesitates. “I… I don’t even know how to explain. Um, Junpei from the past is kind of… resonating with me right now. He can see and hear and feel everything I can.”

“That’s possible?” Sigma says, bewildered.

“Um, yeah. Junpei and Akane resonated a long time ago, and he used that resonance to send information to her in the past so that she wouldn’t die in an incinerator. It’s… a long story.” Every word seems to confuse Sigma more. Phi, however, seems to be following.

“So he’s sending his consciousness through time?” Phi says.

_ It’s not quite the same thing. I can only send my consciousness through time if I have a body to land in. And my consciousness and the consciousness of future or past me would switch places. It’s called SHIFTing. This is like… transmission and receiving across time due to a resonant event _ , Junpei says.

Clover sighs. She hates playing messenger pigeon. “Not exactly. It’s more like… we’re exchanging thoughts through time. I’m transmitting everything I see and here, and he’s receiving it.”

“How is that even possible?” Sigma says, still very, very confused.

_ Akane explains it via recording in the room in the middle door. Try using Akane’s ID card to get into the computer in there. _

“I’m not explaining that right now. Just take my word for it. Apparently, there’s a computer in the middle room, room Q, that explains it more,” Clover says. “I’m going to keep reading now, okay?”

“Uh, sure.” Sigma shakes his head as if shaking away the cobwebs in his brain.

“Clover, I am sorry that I had to pluck you and Alice from your time period. Junpei, I am sorry that I took her from you. In most timelines, you do not grow to care about her as much as you do now, which makes this even harder to do. But I had no choice. If there is to be a world where Radical-6 does not escape, I must recreate the future that I’ve seen.

“I’m sure these words mean little to you now, but I did not want to leave you. I wanted more than anything to be selfish and stay with you. Fate is not so kind. I do not seek your forgiveness, but you deserve to know what I was thinking when I made my choice. I thought that you would be happier not remembering that I had chosen to leave you, or at least not remembering the horrors of the Decision Game. In choosing to keep those memories, you have also given me a backup plan, should the original plan fail.

“Junpei, if my predictions are correct, you will become an esper just as powerful as me, although in a different way. Since you remember DCOM, you know about SHIFTing, and you likely have figured out what this plan is intended to do. I will be forced to give you more Soporil than usual because I cannot let you have these memories right away, or Sigma and Phi will not develop their abilities naturally.”

Clover pauses and looks up at Sigma. “Huh. Maybe you  _ are _ Zero.”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Sigma stutters.

“Clover and I saw a projection in the Director’s Office of someone who looks just like you, and he claimed to be Zero. He then lectured us about termites, which was quite confusing,” K explains.

_ Sigma’s a headass, _ Junpei says helpfully.

“But I would remember something like that, right? I… I swear, I’m not lying,” Sigma says, confused.

“Yeah, no offense, Sigma, but you don’t really strike me as a cunning guy,” Clover says casually. “Anyway, I’m going to keep reading. Maybe we’ll figure it out later.”

“Right…” Sigma still looks uneasy. 

“There are three things you need to know to finish what I have started. First, Zero Jr. has been instructed to overwrite the protocols of the Nonary Game if given a secret password. I request that you only use this password if the plan has failed utterly, or if you need other doors open for the plan to succeed. Luna and K will be able to help you return to Earth.” Clover raises an eyebrow at K, who just shakes his head.

“I’m afraid that I have yet to remember enough to know what Akane is talking about,” K says. “My memories are starting to come back, though, so it is simply a matter of time.”

“Whoa, whoa, wait. What’s this part about returning to Earth? Are we not on Earth right now?” Sigma says, shocked as always.

Phi frowns. “It’s possible. There are no windows here, so we don’t know what the world outside looks like.”

“Aoi’s letter also said something about returning to Earth,” Clover thinks aloud. “I think Junpei knew where we are. Maybe Quark knows, too.”

“Well, we’ll have to wait to hear from him. Keep going,” Sigma says.

Clover nods and continues to read. “Second, everyone has been infected with Radical-6 except for K, due to the fact that his armor cannot be opened without the key, and Luna, who is not human. Uh…”

“Luna isn’t human? What is she, then?” Phi says, eyebrows furrowed as she thinks through the possibilities.

“Maybe she’s a robot? She seemed pretty humanoid to me,” Sigma says.

Clover’s eyes widen as something occurs to her. “The tubocurarine. If she’s not human, that means the tubocurarine didn’t kill her.”

_ Congrats, you’re only partially a murderer, _ Junpei says sarcastically.

_ He killed you, Junpei. What did you think I was going to do, kiss and make up with him? _

_ That would’ve been fun to watch. _

“Luna’s alive… K, did you see her body in the infirmary?” Sigma asks.

K pauses, then shrugs. “To be honest, I did not look very closely. It was not a pleasant sight.”

“Wait. What happened in the infirmary?” Phi asks suspiciously.

Clover’s not going to cry again. She’s not. She  _ has _ to be out of tears by now. “I think… if Akane is telling the truth, Alice might have killed herself. I injected Luna with tubocurarine by accident, and she… pretended to die, at least. Dio saw me do it and tried to kill me, but Tenmyouji defended me. I killed Dio, and then Tenmyouji died of blood loss.”

“Oh. Wow.” Even Phi can be surprised by things, it seems.

“And you tried to kill yourself, apparently because of Radical-6,” Sigma adds. “Wait, actually, maybe we should vote while we’re all still, uh, sane.”

“I’m almost done reading. There’s only a little left,” Clover says, showing him the paper. “Second, everyone has been infected with Radical-6 except for K, due to the fact that his armor cannot be opened without the key, and Luna, who is not human. You can use the IG Replicator in the lab to make more Axelavir. There is one vial in the lab safe, two vials in the Q room, and a few more vials in another room that you cannot access yet. Luna will know where.

“The purpose of infecting you with Radical-6 was to slow your brain’s processing speed, allowing Sigma and Phi to store up potential energy, like a slingshot. Then, with a near-death experience, we can release that energy and send them into the past. I’m sure you remember, Junpei, how insistent Sigma was about the existence of Radical-6 and the death of six billion people. It sounded like crazy talk, then, but that is because the Sigma that you met was sixty seven years old. He SHIFTed from the future.

“Third, the time loop that we are trying to close is a bit complex. There is a diagram in the botanical garden that shows the path. When you exit the number nine door or give Zero Jr. the password, all other doors in this facility will open, enabling you to cure yourselves of Radical-6 and find the remaining clues you need to understand what is going on, although I doubt that you will need them, Junpei.

“The password to signal to Zero Jr. that you have read and understood my message is as follows: Aoi’s code name from the second Nonary Game + my code name from the second Nonary Game + the month and day that Clover was born. If it is not Junpei or Clover reading this, I’m sure that this is absolute nonsense to you. You will have to rely on escaping through the number nine door instead.

“No matter what timeline you’re in, I wish you luck. Sincerely, Akane Kurashiki.”

“Please tell me you know what the password is,” Sigma says desperately.

Clover nods. “It would be kind of silly if I didn’t know my own birthday. Hey, Zero Jr.! I’ve got a password for you.”

Zero Jr. pops up on the screen. “Well, well, weeeeeeell, it’s about time you rang, Cleaver. Do you  _ hoppen _ to know the password?”

“It’s Santa, June, November first,” Clover says confidently.

“Ding ding ding! Command acknowledged. Unlocking bracelets… now.” As Zero Jr. says the words, the bracelets fall right off their wrists. “Unlocking all doors in the facility except the number nine door. You guys are lucky that Akane left that for you. Zero reaaaally didn’t want her to.”

“What, he was just going to let us  _ die _ of Radical-6?” Sigma cries.

Zero Jr. shrugs. “Sure. I mean, if you don’t win the game, you lose the game, right?”

“That’s such an Akane way of thinking about things,” Clover mutters.

_ No, she… she didn’t want to do this. She left the failsafe because I…  _ Junpei trails off. Clover wants to ask about it, but it feels… personal.  _ Well, that’s what I needed to see. It’s getting tough to hold this link, so I’m going to drop out now _ .

_ Wait! _ Clover’s chest tightens. When Junpei leaves her, he’ll be gone for real. For good.  _ Junpei, I...  _

_ I know. I can feel everything you’re feeling, remember? _ Clover can practically hear Junpei’s kind smile.  _ Don’t mourn by yourself. You’ll have Aoi and Quark and Light with you, too. Let them in. _

_ I… I will… _ Clover’s bottom lip wobbles. No. She’s not going to let Junpei watch her cry again.  _ Thank you, Junpei. For saving my life _ .

_ I would do it again in a heartbeat _ .

Clover is about to say something in response, but Junpei is gone. She feels empty inside.

“Zero Jr., do you know where Luna is?” K asks.

“Yup! She’s in the treatment center, giving Quark some Axelavir. She and Quark will hop down here soon. Have a nice trick!” Zero Jr. disappears before they can ask him more questions.

Clover realizes belatedly that Junpei hadn’t told her what Akane was trying to do.

“Sigma, Phi. Junpei said… that Akane’s ID card might give you the information you need to get into the computer in the Q room. It sounds like Akane’s plan has to do with the two of you, so maybe you should go check it out,” Clover says. K hands the ID card to Sigma.

Sigma and Phi exchange a glance.

“Okay. We’ll go figure out what this is about. But first.” Sigma takes the vial of Axelavir out of his pocket and hands it to Clover. “You should use this. Tenmyouji went through all that effort to keep you alive, so it would kind of suck if you died now.”

“Thanks.” Clover puts the vial in the injection gun. “I guess Luna will know where we can find some more Axelavir for you.”

“Yeah. If we see her on the way, we’ll ask her,” Phi says. “We’ll come back here when we’re done, so wait for us, okay?”

“Yup. Sure thing.” Clover gives Phi a thumbs up.

“There is something I want to check. I think I may have remembered where my key is being kept,” K says. “Do you mind if I leave you here alone for a little while?”

Clover nods. “I’ll be fine.” She doesn’t really sound fine, her voice still cracks and there’s still tear tracks on her face, but she will be fine. She means it.

Sigma, Phi, and K don’t look convinced, but Clover glares at them and they all leave.

Once she’s alone, she loads the injection gun and injects the Axelavir into her left bicep. She’s never really given herself a shot before, and it’s a little weird, but she doesn’t particularly hate needles.

She’s not sure how long she sits there before Quark and Luna join her. She hardly notices them come in.

“Where is everyone?” Quark asks.

“Sigma and Phi went to go watch a recording in room Q, and K went to go find the key to his suit,” Clover says dully.

“What about everyone else? Where’s Grandpa?”

Clover and Luna exchange desperate looks. Shit. Someone has to tell him.

“Grandpa died trying to protect me,” Clover says softly. “I’m sorry.”

Tears come to Quark’s eyes, and he sits down next to Clover, resting his head on his knees. He’s trying so hard not to cry. “Grandpa told me… that he might not make it. He said if that happened, it was my job to get you home.”

Clover doesn’t say anything. She just puts an arm around Quark and scoots closer to him. He doesn’t resist.

“We got an invitation from Zero saying we had to come here or he would kill you. And Grandpa… let me decide…” Quark’s lip trembles. “He said that the chance of you and me and him getting out was pretty small, and that my life would be the first one in danger.”

“You chose to risk your life for me,” Clover says in quiet awe.

“All three of my grandpas look so sad every time they talk about you, Miss Clover. I couldn’t just…”

“Thank you.” Clover squeezes Quark tight.

“But I— I killed him! I chose to come here and now Grandpa’s dead because of me!” Quark wails, and he begins to sob loudly, his small body shaking as he cries. Clover holds him and lets him cry the way Light used to do for her when they were younger. She doesn’t try to console him, because she knows it won’t mean anything while he’s this distraught.

Once his tears have slowed and he’s no longer hiccuping, Clover speaks. “If anything, I’m the one who killed him. He only died because I did something stupid and he had to save me. But I don’t think that’s right, either. This game killed him. Dio killed him. Not us. Okay?”

“Okay,” Quark says, but he doesn’t look convinced.

It will take time.

“Um… Miss Clover—”

“Just Clover. I’m not  _ that _ much older than you,” Clover interrupts.

“O-Okay. Clover, do you think I can see him one more time? I want to say goodbye.”

The image of the infirmary, with four dead bodies and puddles of blood all over the floor, flashed through Clover’s mind. “I don’t think…”

“I’ve moved their bodies,” Luna interrupts, startling Clover. She’d completely forgotten about Luna. “I’m going to clean them up so that you can take them back to Earth for a proper funeral.”

“Thank you,” Clover whispers. Alice and Junpei… she hadn’t gotten to say her goodbyes, either. “Do you think you can wait until then, Quark?”

“...Yeah.” Quark grips Clover’s hand firmly as if he’s afraid she’ll disappear, too. “Grandpas Aoi and Light deserve to see him, too.”

Aoi. Light. Clover’s stomach lurches. She’s going to have to tell them that they’ve exchanged one family member for another.

The PA dings, and Zero Jr.’s voice echoes through the warehouse. “Hellooooooo, everyone! Sigma wants everybunny to meet up in the pantry because none of you have eaten anything since you got hare!”

“Oh.” Clover hasn’t felt hungry, but maybe that was a symptom of Radical-6. “Well, we should go, then.” She stands up and then offers a hand to Quark. He takes her hand and pulls himself off the ground. “Luna, are you coming?”

Luna shakes her head. “Oh, I don’t think so. I need to get everything ready so you all can leave. Could you tell everyone else?”

“Sure,” Quark says, trying to sound as chipper as his usual self with limited success.

The entire time they’re walking to the pantry, Quark doesn’t let go of Clover’s hand.


	6. K Route: Part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tenmyouji cannot catch a break.

“So, why’d you choose this door?” Clover asks.

“Because I remember the other door being important for Sigma and Phi. I can’t remember the specifics, but I remember that much.” Junpei sighs and scratches the back of his head. “I think Akane intentionally gave me a higher dose of Soporil because she thought I’d say too much. It felt like I was walking through molasses up until the first AB game.”

“I guess that would make sense...” The scan finishes, and the secondary door opens. They walk out into a hallway with a door right across from them. “Director’s Office,” Clover reads aloud. “Oh, is this, like, Zero’s office?”

Junpei shrugs. “Maybe. Let’s go.”

They walk through the door into a room that looks like the kind of office that some haughty official person might have. Actually, Clover thinks with a smile, Aoi would enjoy having an office like this. Junpei walks over to the desk and sits down with his back against it and his eyes closed.

“Junpei? Are you okay?” Clover asks.

“Yeah. Just tired.” Junpei takes a couple breaths and opens his eyes. “Clover, do you mind being my arms and legs for a bit? I can help with the puzzles, of course.”

“Are you  _ sure _ you’re okay?” Clover asks again.

Junpei sighs heavily and leans back against the desk. “That treatment pod might’ve helped my wounds heal physically, but I don’t think it fixed the blood loss. I’ll be okay. I just need some water.”

“O-okay.” Clover starts to look around the room. It kind of reminds her of the captain’s quarters. She starts on the right side of the room and examines the desk. There’s a business card holder, which she hands to Junpei, and a computer with a keyboard that doesn’t work. Great. She walks to the shelf at the back of the room. “Hey, Junpei, look. There’s some brandy!”

“I really could use a drink right now,” Junpei says wistfully.

“Huh? Didn’t you go sober in October?” Clover asks.

“Yeah, well, it’s been a  _ little _ while since then,” Junpei says drily. “I’m not an alcoholic, at least. Aoi made sure of that.”

Clover gives Junpei a skeptical look as she picks up the brandy and a globe off the shelf. “No offense, but I don’t believe you.”

Junpei laughs. “Well, I don’t blame you for that, but I’m not lying. Can I see that globe?”

“Sure thing.” Clover sets the globe down in front of Junpei and walks over to the other side of the room, where there’s another bottle of brandy on a bookshelf. She swaps the brandy bottle in her hands for the one on the bookshelf and puts that bottle on the shelf on the other side of the room. A laser coming from the wall emits a parallelogram shape onto the brandy bottle.

“There’s a map here. I’m not sure what it does,” Junpei says, holding up a sheet of paper. “I’m working on this business card puzzle next.”

“Ooh, let me see the map.” Clover takes the piece of paper. It’s got a bunch of connected colored dots on it. “Hmm, looks like a clue for a puzzle.”

“Try the safe,” Junpei says without looking up from the business card holder.

Clover walks over to the safe and taps the touchscreen, and sure enough, a maze with colored dots pops up on the screen. “Wow, Junpei, it’s almost like you’re psychic or something!”

“Gee, I wonder why that is,” Junpei says sarcastically.

Clover giggles. “Maybe I just wanted to mess with you,” she says pointedly.

“A taste of my own medicine, huh? Clever.” Junpei sets the business card file down and closes his eyes. “Finished it. The back says book 334, if that means anything to you.”

“Hmm, book 334.” Clover sets the map down for the time being and turns to the bookshelf next to her. “Ooh. Got it. There’s three groups of books here. Lemme just… rearrange them… There! Junpei, can you tell me what this looks like from over there?”

Junpei doesn’t respond immediately, so Clover turns around with a frown to find that he’s fallen fast asleep, sitting up completely straight. “Oh, Junpei…” Clover walks over to Junpei and gently moves his head so that he’s laying down on the floor. “You silly, silly man. You didn’t have to stay awake for me if you were so tired. Sleep well, Junpei.”

Clover stands up and turns back to the rest of the room. “Okay. Time to  _ do this _ !” She heads back to the safe and the map and gets to work. She’s never been great at spatial puzzles, but with a little bit of time and effort, she’s able to get the answer. Unfortunately, inside the safe is a moose head that looks like it’s supposed to connect to the wall close to the top, and Clover is not tall enough to attach the moose to the wall. She glances back over at Junpei and drops the moose instantly.

Junpei is holding a short spear to his throat.

“Stop!” Clover yells, running at him with unprecedented speed. There’s no way she’s going to get there fast enough, he’s already getting ready to stab. “Junpei, stop! Quark needs you!”

Junpei’s hand wavers, and Clover takes the opportunity to snatch the spear out of his hand and throw it across the room. Junpei turns towards her with a blank expression. “I need to die. We  _ all _ need to die. I deserve it more than anybody.”

“No! Junpei, come on, snap out of it!” Clover pins Junpei against the wall. “You… you have to live! There’s so many things to live for. We’re going to get out of here, and.. and… you’re going to answer all my questions, and we’re going to annoy each other and…”

“Urgh…” Junpei falls to his knees, and Clover immediately kneels down next to him and puts her hands on his back and shoulder to support him. “I’m… I’m okay…” Junpei says through gritted teeth, but it’s obvious that he’s not. Clover can feel his whole body trembling.

“No, you’re not!” Clover says, exasperated. “You almost  _ died _ just now!”

Junpei puts a hand to his head and squeezes his eyes shut. “Yeah, well. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

Clover falls silent. Her heart is pounding in her chest and she’s still running on the adrenaline and fear from seeing Junpei almost die for the second time today. She takes a deep breath. “How… how does Radical-6 work? What do I do if that happens again?”

“With most people, you can’t do much. Lucky you, I’m not most people.” Junpei lets out a shaky breath. “I didn’t live this long without developing antibodies. And being an esper helps fight off the urge, too. But it doesn’t… go away.”

“So right now, you…”

“Yeah. I still want to kill myself.”

Clover stands up. Her hands are shaking. “I’m going to get us out of here as fast as I can. Just… hold on. Please.”

Junpei sits on his hands and crosses his legs. His eyes are still closed, and his whole body is tense. “I will.”

Clover grabs the short spear and sticks it in the hole in the desk drawer. Inside, there’s a key. A quick look around reveals a keyhole in what she thinks is some sort of facial recognition device on the wall. She’s seen these at SOIS before, but this one is  _ way _ fancier, almost like it’s from the future. Which… maybe it is. Clover slots the key in the hole and puts her face up to the device. It scans her for a moment, then beeps, and the wall next to the device rotates to reveal an armchair with a knight’s helmet on it.

“Ooh, a secret room. Fancy.” Clover grabs the helmet and places it on the top of the suit of armor. “Okay, let’s see.” Clover steps backwards. “H… I don’t know what the moose says… L…” Clover frowns and turns back to the armchair. “Let’s see where this goes.” She sits down in the chair and pulls the lever, and she tenses as the wall rotates again. There’s a red letter P on the wall and a battery on the table next to her. “Ooh, great. H, L, P? Help?” Clover rotates the wall back around, worried that Junpei might lose it and she won’t be there to stop him. Luckily, he’s still sitting there, unmoving, when she returns.

“Okay, battery, battery…” Clover frowns and goes back to the bookshelf. She remembers seeing a tablet around here somewhere… There! Clover picks up the tablet and inserts the battery. A screen pops up asking for a four letter password, and Clover puts in the letters HELP. The screen lights up green with the safe password. “I did it!” She scrambles over to the safe and inputs the password as fast as she can. The safe opens. Clover grabs the key and the star key cards inside. “Junpei, I got the key. We’re out of here.”

Junpei stands up unsteadily and opens his eyes, but he doesn’t speak. Clover shoves the key into the lock next to the door and then links her arm through Junpei’s. Junpei doesn’t resist. In fact, he doesn’t do much of anything. It looks like it’s taking all his self-restraint just to move one foot in front of the other. Clover leads him out the door, where they run into Sigma and Luna. Clover doesn’t even stop walking.

“Hey, wait! Where are you going?” Sigma asks.

Luna, however, gasps. “What’s wrong with Tenmyouji? He doesn’t look good.”

“Radical-6, we can talk later!” Clover calls out. She’s afraid to run when Junpei’s in such a fragile state, so she walks briskly and continues to haul Junpei down the hallway. Sigma catches up to her and slings Junpei’s arm over his shoulders. Junpei’s breathing gets heavier. “Hang in there, Junpei! We’re almost there.”

“I’m… trying…” Junpei says weakly. Clover feels his arm start to move and tightens her grip.

“You have to fight it. For Quark,” Clover says forcefully, trying her best to keep her mounting fear out of her voice.

Junpei squeezes his eyes shut and nods stiffly.

They pass by the pantry and back through the elevator room before getting to the treatment center. Phi is already there, standing next to the treatment pod with Quark inside. The injection gun is sitting on top of the pod behind her.

“Oh! We can use that to administer the cure!” Luna says, grabbing the injection gun. She takes a vial of purple liquid out of her pocket and puts it in the empty slot in the injection gun. “Okay, hold him still.”

Sigma and Clover pin Junpei down against the frosted glass window, and Luna injects the medicine into his upper arm. Clover and Sigma let go of Junpei, and he falls to his knees, panting. “What’s happening? Why isn’t it working?”

“It takes a little bit of time to work, but he’ll be all right,” Luna says.

“Don’t… don’t use the other one yet,” Junpei says through heaving breaths. His fists are clenched and he looks like he’s in pain. “We have to... make more.”

“More?” Sigma asks.

“We’ve all been exposed, right? So it’s possible we’ve all got Radical-6 right now and just don’t know it,” Clover reasons.

“Gimme… a minute…” Junpei slumps against the glass, eyes closed, struggling to breathe. But he looks less like he’s about to break, and more like he’s putting himself together. Clover welcomes the relief that floods her body.

“Did you guys learn anything?” Phi asks.

“Oh… yeah.” Sigma frowns. “We went into the Q room. There was a computer there that asked for a username and password, but… I couldn’t think of anything.”

“The… Q room?” Clover says quietly. “Jun— U-um, Tenmyouji, do you think maybe…?”

Junpei laughs weakly. “Yeah, I bet she was real proud of that one.”

“Who?” Sigma asks.

“Akane Kurashiki,” Clover says so that Junpei doesn’t have to keep pushing himself to talk. “Tenmyouji mentioned her earlier. She, um, was really involved in trying to stop the bioterrorists who were going to release Radical-6. Or, at least, I  _ think _ it was Radical-6. I don’t actually know.”

“Hold on. You  _ also _ know Akane?” Sigma asks.

Clover needs to tread carefully. “Alice and I were working with the government to catch the terrorists. We crossed paths once or twice.” A lie, but there was no way she could explain the Nonary Games without revealing her connection to Junpei. And even  _ she _ didn’t understand why he was old and she was not.

“I can’t say for sure, but I think she had something to do with setting this Nonary Game up.” Junpei slowly peels himself off the floor. “Okay. This is going to sound pretty bad, but before we can make more Axelavir, we need to go through the number nine door.”

“Wait. We only have four star keys between the six of us,” Sigma points out.

“I think we can make it work. Tenmyouji and Clover need a key, which means Quark doesn’t have to vote. Technically, if Sigma and Luna trusted each other, only one of them would have to vote, too. We’d have two extra keys,” Phi explains.

“There’s no reason for any of us to  _ not _ vote ally at this point,” Sigma says, and everyone nods in agreement.

“Right. So we should all be able to get out,” Junpei says. “We’ll want to take Quark, the Axelavir, and the injection gun with us, just in case we can’t get back in. Although in that case, the rest of you are screwed.”

“Back in? You want to get out… and then come  _ back in _ ?” Sigma asks, giving Junpei a bewildered look.

Junpei nods. “I can’t explain everything now. I just need you to trust me.”

“...All right,” Sigma says finally.

“I trust you, Tenmyouji,” Luna says, sweet as always.

Phi frowns, but she nods. “I’ll trust you, too. I don’t have a choice.”

Junpei looks at Clover, who crosses her arms. “You don’t even have to ask me. You already know I trust you.”

“Just making sure. I’ve kind of been stringing you along here without any real explanations,” Junpei says defensively. “Okay, let’s head upstairs. We’ll leave Quark here so his symptoms don’t get worse.”

They have to play the AB game three times to get everyone up to 9 BP. Each game has a forty five minute break between them, so it’s tedious more than anything. During the first break, Luna uses the scanner on each one of them, confirming Tenmyouji’s hypothesis: they all have been infected with Radical-6. During the second break, Phi’s Radical-6 symptoms manifest, and Luna sedates her. They get lucky. Phi is paired with Clover, so Clover’s able to vote for both of them.

Finally,  _ finally _ , they’re done. Sigma carries Phi, and Junpei carries Quark. They all walk out of the number nine door together. The sound of their bracelets unlocking and falling to the floor is liberating.

There’s an elevator on the other side of the door. Junpei walks over to the control panel on the side of the elevator and examines it. “Oh, good. I wasn’t remembering wrong. We need to use this elevator to go down.”

“Down? To floor B?” Luna asks.

Junpei nods. “Didn’t you hear the announcement? Once the number nine door closed, all the other doors in the facility unlocked.”

“Including the door in warehouse B,” Sigma realizes.

“Right. There’s a room on floor B that can replicate Axelavir,” Junpei explains.

“The IG replicator in the laboratory,” Sigma says, then furrows his eyebrows in confusion. “How did I…?”

“You’re an esper. You and Phi both are,” Junpei says, like this explains everything. And it does, to him and Clover, at least, but Sigma is very clearly confused.

“Oh, I know!” Clover says, jumping in. “It’s like… um, okay, imagine a bunch of computers that are all connected to a central computer hub. The central computer hub does all the thinking, then sends all the data and commands out to the other computers to execute. So the thinking happens in one place, and the doing happens in another. Does that make sense?”

Sigma and Phi both nod.

“Now, what if all the other computers could access the central hub? Instead of just receiving commands from the central hub, they’d be able to see all the data collected by the other computers, and they could also provide data to any other computers that can access the central hub,” Clover continues. “That’s how human consciousness works. There’s a ‘central hub’ called the morphogenetic field. Certain people are able to access it to grab information from the collective human consciousness.”

“You can send more than just information through the morphic fieldset,” Junpei says.

“Like what?” Clover asks. This is the first time she’s heard this, but it  _ does _ make sense.

Junpei hesitates. “Clover, do you remember when I had hyper-realistic hallucinations?”

“Duh. You were  _ miserable _ . How could I not remember?”

“Hold on, hold on. Do you two know each other?” Sigma cuts in.

“One thing at a time, Sigma,” Junpei says firmly. The elevator grinds to a halt, and the door in front of them opens, leading into the floor B warehouse. As they start walking, Junpei keeps talking. “I figured out what was going on with them pretty soon after you and Alice were kidnapped. It turns out that I was sending my consciousness through the morphic fieldset on accident. Since I wasn’t doing it intentionally, I kept getting stuck halfway between realities.”

“That sounds awful,” Luna says sympathetically.

“Well, it didn’t help that I keep getting put in these death games. I didn’t have a great selection of realities to choose from,” Junpei says bitterly.

Clover thinks about the nightmares that Junpei had accidentally shared with her, and she grimaces. None of them had been pretty.

“So, um, what happens if you send your consciousness through the morphogenetic field correctly?” Clover asks.

“Before I explain that, do you know what the many-worlds interpretation is?” Junpei asks, directing the question at both of them.

“Um, kind of,” Sigma says with a frown. “Basically, if you consider every choice that’s ever been made, there’s different worlds for each of those choices. In one world, I chose to ally with Luna in the first round, but there’s another world where I betrayed her. Right?”

“Yeah. That’s simple enough for me to explain SHIFTing. I don’t remember what the acronym stands for, but it’s a good word to describe the sensation. When you SHIFT, your consciousness jumps into another timeline, and the consciousness that was already there gets sent back to your timeline. You basically switch places with yourself,” Junpei explains. “To be honest, I haven’t SHIFTed in a long time, at least not completely. It’s hard to SHIFT with your memories intact, especially when you’re SHIFTing across large chunks of time. SHIFTing halfway worked better for what I was trying to do.”

“Which was…?” Sigma sounds overwhelmed by all the information they’ve thrown at him. Clover doesn’t blame him. She was overwhelmed the first time, too.

“Reading the future so I could figure out the best way to get through this game alive,” Junpei says grimly, right as they arrive at the laboratory. The door slides open, revealing… well, a lab. Junpei walks over to the far end of the room where there’s a device with two tubes sticking out of it and gently sets Quark down on the floor. “Luna, we’ll need to put the Axelavir in here.”

“Understood.” Luna takes out the vial of Axelavir and places it in the empty tube. There’s already an empty vial on the other side. Once she’s done, Junpei presses a button on the machine, and it begins to make noise. A moment later, the empty vial fills up with purple liquid.

“Give me the empty vial from when you injected me,” Junpei says as he hands the now-full vial to Luna, and Luna in turn hands him an empty vial. He starts the IG machine again. Luna injects Quark with the Axelavir first, since he’d been sick the longest.

“Hey, Junpei. If what you’re saying is true, then a powerful esper could pull information from other realities, right? It’s one step up from just sending information to another person in the same time and place as you, like what Hongou was trying to do,” Clover says.

“Exactly. And if you’re powerful enough, you might even do it on accident, especially if you’re in enough danger,” Junpei says with a nod. “Okay, here’s another vial.”

“Thank you.” Luna and Junpei swap vials again.

Clover watches as Luna injects Phi. Neither Phi nor Quark look any different than before, but maybe that was because of the Soporil.

“Okay, back to my other question. Clover, Tenmyouji, how do you both know each other? Clover called you Junpei earlier, and I fail to believe that you guys are on a first-name basis just because you explored the director’s office together,” Sigma asks.

Clover and Junpei exchange a glance. “I don’t think Zero can do anything to me now,” Junpei says with a shrug. “Might as well tell him.”

“Um, I would explain, but I’m not entirely sure what’s going on,” Clover admits.

Junpei frowns. “Oh. Right. That reminds me, I need to give you this.” Junpei reaches into his shirt pocket and pulls out an envelope. “Some light reading for you.”

“Huh…?” The envelope has her name on the back, and nothing else. “What’s this?”

“Letters. From Light and Aoi. I wrote one too, shortly after you disappeared.” Junpei hands another vial to Luna, then sighs. “I’d better wait until Phi is awake before I explain. She’ll want to know, too.”

“Uh...” Sigma looks at Clover, then at Junpei, then back to Clover. “Am I the only one who has no clue what’s going on here?”

“I’m sure Phi would be as lost as you are,” Junpei says drily.

“Um, I’m confused, too,” Luna offers. “Clover, I’m ready for you.”

Clover looks over at Luna. She’s holding a loaded injection gun. “Oh. Should I sit down, or…?”

“There’s no need. Hold still for a moment.” Luna approaches Clover with the injection gun. Clover is immediately reminded of earlier that day, when she had almost killed Luna with that same gun. Junpei had stopped her, once again. A sharp prick in her arm pulls Clover out of her thoughts, and she looks over at Luna. “All done. Sigma, you’re next.”

“Here you go, Luna.” Junpei hands Luna another vial, then removes the last vial from the machine. “And this last one will be for you.”

“Wonderful. Thank you, Tenmyouji. You should get some rest,” Luna suggests.

Junpei nods and sits down next to Quark. Clover decides not to bother him.

Instead, she opens the envelope in her hands. Might as well read the letters while she’s waiting for Quark and Phi to wake up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think that if you survived a Radical-6 pandemic, and you are also an esper, you should be able to resist the effects of Radical-6.
> 
> (I also think that if you are Depressed, you probably are quite used to the compulsions that Radical-6 creates.)


	7. Tenmyouji Route: Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a reminder, Junpei remembers the events of DCOM, unlike in canon.

As soon as Tenmyouji hears Diana speak, he knows what he’s listening to. This must be a recording of what happened right after D team escaped. A recording of when Radical-6 was released.

And Diana seems to think that it’s all her fault.

More importantly, there’s only four people Tenmyouji can think of who would leave this recording here, and two of them are in the room with him right now. Except they don’t seem to remember anything after December 25th, which means they either were given a shit ton of Soporil, or something else is going on here.

“Do you know something, Tenmyouji?” Sigma asks, and Tenmyouji sighs. How much of this can he get away with saying before Zero decides to kill him and Quark?

“Yeah. I know what that was. It’s a transmission from the Mars mission test site.”

“Wait! I’ve heard about this!” Clover says suddenly.

Oh shit. Of course she knows. He and Aoi had researched the damn thing for a month right in front of her.

“The government is trying to send a bunch of people to Mars, but they wanted to test things out first, right? So they got nine people to be in a simulation so they could figure out how the actual mission might go. Right?” Clover says, turning to Tenmyouji for confirmation.

Tenmyouji nods. “Yeah, that’s the gist of it.”

“But… that was supposed to start on December 25th, I think. And…” Clover trails off. She and Alice exchange a look. They’ve figured out the time inconsistency, good for them.

“How do you guys know about this?” Sigma asks.

“One of my best friends signed up to be part of the project.” Clover pauses. “And one of my… enemies? I guess? Signed up too.”

“And you, Tenmyouji?” Phi asks.

Damn. He was hoping he wouldn’t have to say anything. “I was involved with the project. I wasn’t there when that transmission was made, but I recognize the voice. She was one of the participants.” Tenmyouji sighs. “The intent was to create as accurate a simulation as possible. That meant we'd need to simulate the radio silence we'd experience during conjunction.”

“What’s a conjunction?” Clover asks.

“It means two things in space are close to each other. In this case, we're talking about a superior conjunction, where Mars and Earth are on the exact opposite sides of the sun. So unless we've got some sort of relay, there'll be a period of time where we won't be able to communicate with each other. What we heard on that card was when the simulated conjunction was scheduled to end,” Tenmyouji explains.

“That’s when they died…” Luna says sadly, looking over at the screen.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “We don’t know that. They could have died long before that conversation. All we know is that's when it was discovered.” In fact, he, Akane, and Carlos  _ had _ died long before that moment. Tenmyouji isn’t sure when Q team died, but it doesn’t really matter.

“Well...do you remember what she said? There was something about how she didn't just kill six people… She said six billion. What the heck did she mean by that?” Sigma wonders.

“Just what the hell happened there?” Alice says.

Tenmyouji closes his eyes, and he can practically feel the reactor exploding, Gatling guns driving bullets into his body, poison sapping his life away bit by bit. What happened there? Oh, a lot happened there. A lot that these people don’t need to know about.

“The truth is that there’s a chance a virus escaped from the test site,” Tenmyouji finally says.

“You don’t mean—”

“Yeah. Radical-6.”

“Wh-What? How can that be?” Luna says, horrified.

“One of the subjects might have been infected when they entered, or the virus itself might have been an intentional part of the simulation. The test site deaths became the index case for a pandemic. We don’t know. Prevailing wisdom says it got out somehow, and once it was out it spread pretty quick. All across the planet,” Tenmyouji says grimly.

“And it killed six billion people?” Phi asks calmly, not nearly as disturbed as everyone else in the room.

“Well, not directly. Best numbers put only a third or so of those deaths as directly caused by Radical-6. The other four billion died from the collapse caused by the deaths of that first third. The whole world just...fell apart.” Tenmyouji pushes away his memories of the nuclear winter. He doesn’t want to think about that shit right now.

“Wait, but the simulation was supposed to end on December 31st, right?” Clover asks, even though she already knows the answer. “So how long have we been in here, anyway? For something like that to happen, at least a few months have to have passed, right?”

Tenmyouji grimaces. He can’t answer that question. Not while they’re still in here. He turns away. “I can’t say any more than that. Zero said he’d kill me and Quark if I said anything. You’ll have to figure the rest out on your own.”

“Aw, man! Leave it to Zero to hide all the answers in plain sight,” Clover says in dismay.

All the answers in plain sight, huh? Tenmyouji’s starting to figure out what Akane meant to do here. No, what she  _ had _ to do here. God damn it, he hates time loops.

~*~

Clover spends the walk to the AB room deep in thought. Something about Tenmyouji’s behavior feels… strange. But she can’t quite put her finger on it. Had he been one of the participants at the test site? Or maybe he was one of the scientists? Either way, he probably knows the names of the participants.

And six of them had died.

Clover hadn’t recognized the voice of the person who’d spoke on the recording. There were only two other survivors. Had Junpei…?

Clover runs right past K and towards Tenmyouji. She needs  _ some _ of her questions answered  _ now _ .

“Hey! Tenmyouji!” Clover calls out. His annoyance is very obvious as he turns back towards her. “Who were the other survivors at the test site? Besides the girl we heard speaking.”

Tenmyouji hesitates for a moment, and then he shakes his head. “At the time, Diana thought six of the participants were dead. But three of them had actually lived. There were six survivors total.”

“Oh.” Clover sighs in relief. Junpei’s chances of survival had just increased by a lot. “Do you know if a man named Junpei survived?”

“Yeah. He did.” Something about Tenmyouji’s voice strikes Clover as strange, but again, she can’t tell exactly what it is.

“Do you know what happened to him afterwards?” Clover asks.

“Can’t tell you. Get Quark’s bracelet off his wrist and I’ll be happy to give you the rest of the story,” Tenmyouji says grumpily.

“Why just Quark’s bracelet? Didn’t you say Zero threatened to kill both of you?” Sigma asks, apparently having overhead the last bit of their conversation.

“As long as Quark is safe, I don’t give a shit what happens to me,” Tenmyouji says bluntly. “Anyway, I’ll vote ally, so you guys are welcome to do whatever the hell you want.”

What a self-sacrificial attitude. Such sadness in his eyes. He looks so  _ tired _ . Almost like…

As Tenmyouji walks into his AB room, something clicks in her head. Oh my god.  _ Oh my god _ .

She turns to Sigma as soon as they’re in their own AB room. “We have to vote ally. Please.”

“Uh.” Sigma gives her a confused look. “That was always my plan, but why do  _ you _ want to vote ally? Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to get to 9 points?”

“No. I don’t care about that. I’m not leaving without hearing the rest of Tenmyouji’s story,” Clover says firmly. She’s disobeying a direct order from Alice here, but if Tenmyouji truly is Junpei, then her knowledge of the outside world is obsolete.

“All right, then. That decides that.” Sigma hits the ally button, and Clover sighs in relief.

The doors to the AB room slide back open, and Clover practically runs outside. She needs to talk to Tenmyouji,  _ now _ . But as she looks around, she realizes that Alice is nowhere to be found. “Where’s Alice?” she shouts, looking at K. If he did anything to her…

“As soon as the doors opened, she left somewhat unsteadily towards the cyan door,” K says calmly. “While we were in the AB room, she mentioned being quite tired. Perhaps she went to one of the cabins to rest?”

“Shit.” Tenmyouji runs off toward the cyan door without any explanation.

“Wait! What are you—” Clover doesn’t bother to finish her sentence. He isn’t going to tell her, so she just runs right behind him. Sigma follows, too, maybe because he’s just as confused as Clover, or maybe because he wants to talk to Tenmyouji, too.

They run through the cyan door and to the crew quarters. The door to cabin two is open. Clover runs in just in time to see Alice trying to stab her chest with a scalpel. Tenmyouji moves faster than lightning and grabs the scalpel by the blade. “Sigma! I’m not strong enough to stop her!” he yells.

“Right, on it!” Sigma grabs Alice’s wrist and Clover grabs her by the waist.

“Alice, stop! What are you doing?” Clover cries.

“Let me go! I have to die. I  _ have _ to  _ die _ !” Alice yells, writhing in Clover’s grip.

Tenmyouji finally wrestles the scalpel out of Alice’s hands and throws it to the ground. His hand has been sliced open, but he hardly seems to notice. “She’s not going to listen to you. Our best bet is to—” As he’s about to finish his sentence, Alice collapses into Clover’s and Sigma’s arms. “—wait for her to tire out. Let’s get her to the infirmary.”

“And you, too. Your hand is bleeding,” Clover points out.

Tenmyouji looks down at his hand. “Oh. Yeah.”

Okay, he is  _ definitely _ Junpei.

Sigma carries Alice to the infirmary. Clover’s way too short to support Alice’s weight fully, anyway, so she lets him handle it. Luna is still there, watching over Quark, and Phi is there as well. Sigma lays Alice down on the exam table next to the ADAM.

“What the hell happened?” Phi asks, looking at Tenmyouji’s hand.

“Alice just tried to kill herself,” Tenmyouji answers. “Luna, can you scan her?”

“Um, yes. But first, your hand…”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll handle it,” Tenmyouji says calmly, and he walks over to the sink to wash the cut. Clover is worried about Alice, but she’s  _ also _ worried about her favorite idiot Junpei. She starts looking in the cabinets and finds a roll of bandages behind all the medicine.

“Tenmyouji, you can use these,” she says, turning around.

“Thanks.” Tenmyouji wipes his hands dry with a rag and then sits down on the edge of Quark’s bed and starts to wrap the bandages around his hand. The pain doesn’t seem to bother him at all.

“Are you  _ crazy _ ? Why would you grab the blade like that?” Sigma says incredulously.

“Got there first, had to stall for time. I’m not strong enough to overpower Alice,” Tenmyouji says with a shrug.

“I… really appreciate it,” Clover says quietly.

“I’m just glad we got to her before…” Tenmyouji trails off. He doesn’t really need to finish the sentence.

“How did you know that she was in danger?” Sigma asks.

Tenmyouji frowns and pauses for a moment. “Sigma, do you know anything about morphogenetic field theory?”

Another bit of proof for her Junpei theory.

“No, I’ve never heard of it,” Sigma says.

“Me neither,” Phi says. “What is this theory about?”

Tenmyouji pauses and waits. Slowly, Sigma and Phi both remember something. Clover’s not really sure what, exactly. Maybe Tenmyouji had explained it to them in another timeline?

“...What the hell? How do I know this?” Sigma says in disbelief.

“The same way that I knew Alice was about to die. Somewhere, in another timeline, a version of me got to that cabin too late and she was already dead,” Tenmyouji says.

“Another timeline, huh…” Phi pauses for a moment. “So what you’re saying is, even across timelines, people can exchange information through this field.”

Tenmyouji nods. “It’s not like a phone call where the data goes from one end to the other. You have to search for it, and you have to know what you’re looking for.”

“And you knew to look for Alice’s death?” Sigma asks, crossing his arms.

Clover shakes her head. “It’s not always like  _ that _ . It’s like, something happens and your mind just kind of pulls information from the field that might be related. You don’t always have control. If you ever felt like you just  _ knew _ something but you weren’t sure how, it was probably the morphic fieldset.”

“How do you both know about this?” Phi asks.

“Um… I hate to interrupt, but I’ve finished scanning Alice.” Luna says from the other side of the partition. Dread settles like a rock in Clover’s stomach, and she, Sigma, and Phi walk over to the other side where the ADAM is. “Alice has the same illness that Quark did. Radical-6,”

“Shit! We already used the Axelavir on Quark!” Sigma says in frustration.

Clover’s first instinct is to panic. Her  _ second _ instinct is to see what Tenmyouji is thinking. She walks back over to the other side of the partition. He doesn’t look too worried, so maybe… maybe Alice will be okay, somehow. “Tenmyouji, you don’t look worried at all,” Clover says.

“I  _ am _ worried, but not because of Alice. Quark should have never been able to catch Radical-6 in the first place. He has natural antibodies to the virus. So…” Tenmyouji trails off and looks over at Alice. “Zero must have injected him with it. This is part of the game.”

“ _ What _ ?” Sigma yells. Jeez, does  _ everything _ surprise this guy?

“We’re wearing bracelets that could kill us. I don’t think it’s that surprising that Zero threw a life-threatening virus into the mix,” Clover points out, trying to keep her voice even. If it’s part of the game, then there has to be a way to save her. There  _ has _ to be.

Tenmyouji seems to think the same thing. “We’ll just have to find more Axelavir. There’s three rooms behind the white doors that we haven’t been to, so maybe there’s some Axelavir behind one of them.”

Clover presses the buttons on the sides of her watch. Twenty-five minutes left. Plenty of time to interrogate Tenmyouji.

Clover turns around to ask him a question, then pauses. Luna, Phi, and Sigma are all here. How can she ask this question without making it obvious what she’s asking? “Hey, Tenmyouji, do you know what the four leaves on a clover represent?”

“Hope, faith, love, and luck,” Tenmyouji says without missing a beat.

Clover has to work very hard to stop the grin that threatens to spread on her face. “Yeah, that’s right. You’re smarter than I thought.”

Tenmyouji gives her a dirty look, but he doesn’t say anything. He  _ can’t _ say anything without giving himself away.

“Why does that matter?” Sigma asks, puzzled.

“Oh… well, a long time ago, someone told me those words to make me feel better when I’d lost all hope, and it helped me keep going. So I’m going to focus on those four words now. We’re  _ going _ to save Alice.” It’s all the truth, of course, but it’s also sort of a lie. Sigma doesn’t seem to notice. From the corner of her eye, Clover sees Tenmyouji roll his eyes.

“Uh… okay. Anyway, there was something I wanted to ask you about,” Sigma says.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “Don’t waste your breath. I’m not telling you anything. The only reason I told you as much as I did is because it was clear with that recording that Zero wanted you to know that information.”

“But—”

“I’m not telling you about what happened at the Mars mission test site, or what happened afterwards. Figure it out on your own.”

“You don’t even know what I’m going to ask you!” Sigma threw up his hands in frustration.

“What, you gonna ask me if I’m married?” Tenmyouji says sarcastically.

Clover cocks her head to the side. “Are you?”

“No. Not that it’s any of your damn business,” Tenmyouji says with a glare.

So he never got over Akane, huh.

“Can I ask you something unrelated?” Phi says, and then continues without waiting for an answer. “It’s about Radical-6. Do you know what the symptoms are?” Phi asks.

Tenmyouji nods. “It attacks your brain. Slows your brain’s processing speed down a hell of a lot. The overload of information relative to your brain’s processing speed overwhelms you, and so you try to kill yourself.”

“Oh my god…” Clover can’t even imagine what the outside world must be like if Radical-6 had spread like Tenmyouji had said. So many people would die…

Sigma and Phi are similarly horrified. They don’t say anything.

“Mmm… Grandpa…?” Quark opens his eyes and rubs them with his hands.

“Hey, kiddo. How are you feeling?” Tenmyouji says, and he pulls Quark up and into a hug. There are tears in the corner of his eyes.

“Huh? Did something happen?” Quark gives Tenmyouji a puzzled look. “I feel a little weird.”

“You were sick,” Tenmyouji says quietly.

Quark’s eyes widen, and he looks at Clover. “Then does that mean—”

“We still have a little more to go. The next Chromatic Doors open in fifteen minutes,” Tenmyouji says, very intentionally stopping Quark before he can say more.

“Okay.” Quark wriggles out of Tenmyouji’s arms and peeks past the partition. “Where’s everyone else?”

“K went to look around a little more, and Dio…” Phi shrugs.

“Oh.” Quark looks back at Sigma and Phi. “Were you interrogating Grandpa? He’s too stubborn. He won’t say anything he doesn’t want to.”

Clover giggles. “Sounds like someone is speaking from experience.”

“There are some things you don’t need to know about until you’re older,” Tenmyouji says, crossing his arms.

“Why not?” Quark says, pouting a little. It’s very adorable, but Tenmyouji is completely unaffected, like a parent who’s seen this way too often.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Tenmyouji says with a smirk.

“That’s not fair,” Quark whines.

“Don’t worry, Quark. I’ll tell you everything you want to know when Tenmyouji isn’t listening,” Clover says with a wink.

“Clover, if you corrupt my kid, I am going to kill you,” Tenmyouji says through gritted teeth.

“You’re an old man. I’m nineteen. You really think you stand a chance?” Clover says tauntingly.

“Stop fighting. We need to go down to the warehouse,” Phi says sharply. Clover gives Tenmyouji an innocent grin, and he waits until Quark isn’t looking to flip her off.

“I’ll carry Alice. She’s with Dio and Phi, right?” Sigma says.

“Yeah. Thanks,” Phi responds.

As they all get ready to leave, Tenmyouji frowns and picks up the injection gun from the counter. “Maybe we should take some Soporil. Just in case someone else gets infected.”

“Good idea,” Luna agrees, and she grabs two vials from the shelf and hands them to Tenmyouji. “Here.”

Clover watches Tenmyouji turn the injection gun over in his hands. The look in his eyes suggests that he knows something. Clover intentionally walks in step with Tenmyouji. “What’s the Soporil  _ really _ for?”

Tenmyouji glares at Clover. Clover glares right back. Tenmyouji sighs.

“Dio. Things have been going too well. He’s going to try  _ something _ ,” Tenmyouji says finally.

Clover considers asking why, then decides against it. She trusts Junpei.


	8. Clover Route: Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this is almost purely filler. I just think Quark deserves some closure, you know?
> 
> Major spoilers for 999. Like, seriously. This chapter spoils the entirety of the game.

When they arrive at the pantry, K hands them each a container of food. They sit on the floor since there are no tables. Clover still isn’t hungry, but she eats anyway because she knows she needs the strength. Quark, on the other hand, pokes at his pasta with his fork and moves it around the Tupperware but makes no motion to eat.

“Quark,” Sigma says gently, “you need to eat something.”

“I know… I just can’t stop thinking about Grandpa…” Quark stabs a piece of pasta with his fork.

“Do you want to hear a story about Grandpa from when he was young?” Clover asks, trying to put on a smile for Quark’s sake.

Quark perks up a little. “What kind of story?”

“What kind of story do you want to hear?” Clover says.

“Oh! I wanna know about the Nonary Game. Grandpa would never tell me anything about it,” Quark says.

Clover chuckles. “Well, Grandpa’s the hero of that story, so I bet that’s why he didn’t like talking about it.”

“I wanna hear about Grandpa being a hero,” Quark says, and for a moment, he doesn’t sound so miserable.

“All right. This story takes place a long time ago, in 2027, on my eighteenth birthday. Grandpa was only twenty one years old. Grandpa Aoi and Grandpa Light were there, too, and they were… twenty four, I think.” Clover pauses. “Take a bite, and I’ll keep going.”

Quark pouts but puts a piece of pasta in his mouth.

“Before I can tell you about my eighteenth birthday, I have to tell you about my ninth birthday, first. Right before my ninth birthday, me, Grandpa Light, Grandpa Aoi, and his sister, Akane, were kidnapped by some bad guys. They were trying to do an experiment that needed nine pairs of siblings. One sibling from each pair was put on a boat with a lot of puzzles on it, and the other sibling was put in a building in Nevada with the same puzzles. This was the first Nonary Game.”

Clover hesitates. Should she soften the rules a bit for Quark? Probably. 

“The nine children on the ship had to escape the ship by solving puzzles. If they didn’t escape in nine hours, the ship would sink. To get off the ship, they had to find the number nine door. But there were rules about how to open the doors. Each person had a bracelet on their wrist with a number on it from one to nine. To open a door, you had to combine the numbers in a specific way so it would match the number on the door, and then scan the bracelets with those numbers on them. Only three to five people could go through a single numbered door, and once they did, they had eighty one seconds to find the second scanner. And  _ everyone _ who scanned their bracelet had to go through the door. If you broke any of these rules, you were… penalized.”

“Holy shit,” Sigma says, then covers his mouth. “Uh, I mean, shoot.”

“Don’t worry, Grandpa Aoi curses all the time. I know all the curse words now!” Quark says happily.

“Nice to know Aoi still curses like a sailor,” Clover says with a sigh.

“All of this actually happened, right?” Phi asks.

Clover nods. “My brother, Light, was on the ship. So was Aoi. And… the people who organized the game messed up. They were supposed to put Akane, Aoi’s sister, in the other building with me, but she was on the ship, too.”

“Why did it matter who was in which place?” Sigma asks.

“Because the point of the experiment was to prove the existence of the morphic fieldset, and the idea was that siblings would have a stronger innate connection. In each sibling pair, one person was better at transmitting information through the field, and the other person was better at receiving information. So the idea was to have the transmitters solve the puzzles in the building and then transmit the answers to the receivers on the ship.”

“But you were just kids! How were you supposed to know how to do this? How did they even know this was possible? What if you guys  _ failed _ ?” Sigma says.

Clover averts her gaze. “I don’t think they cared if the kids on the ship got out or not. After all, there were nine kids, but only five people could walk through a numbered door.”

Sigma’s eyes widen in horror. It’s nice to talk to someone who actually has normal reactions to all these crazy things.

“What’s the morphic fieldset?” Phi asks, unfazed as usual.

“Oh. Hmm, how to explain it to Quark… did Grandpa ever tell you about morphogenetic field theory?” Clover asks, turning to Quark.

Quark nods. “It’s the thing that means that sometimes Grandpa Aoi sees Grandpa’s nightmares, right? And it’s also how Grandpa can see the future, but it makes him really tired and I have to give him a hug afterwards to make him feel better.”

Clover smiles sadly. “Hugs were important to Grandpa. They were one of the only ways he could tell the present from the future if he was seeing both at the same time.”

“Hold on, hold on, back up. Tenmyouji could see the  _ future _ ?” Sigma says.

“Sort of. I’m not actually sure how it worked. From Akane’s note, it sounds like he got even more powerful after I was kidnapped, so maybe he was able to control it, but when I was living with him, he would just have random hallucinations or nightmares, like he couldn’t shut off his connection to the morphic field,” Clover says with a shrug.

“Grandpa Aoi says that Grandpa could close his eyes and work really hard and then he would be in the present and the future at the same time. Grandpa has this big bulletin board at home with all these sticky notes about the things he saw,” Quark adds.

“Yeah, I think… I think he was trying to figure out the best outcome of this game,” Clover says quietly. Stupid, stupid Junpei.

“Hey, Sigma. I think this is what Akane was talking about in that recording,” Phi says thoughtfully.

“Oh, you mean all that stuff about the fourth dimension and humans being connected?” Sigma says, frowning. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“The scientists thought there were two things that could strengthen a person’s connection to the morphic fieldset. First, epiphany. You know, that feeling when you finally figure out the answer to something. That’s why all the puzzles were there. Second, danger. So the game was life-threatening. If we wanted our siblings to live, we had to solve the puzzles as quickly as we could.” Clover tries to say it as casually as she can. 

But she can still remember running through hallways that were too big for her, trying to move around objects in ways that didn’t make sense to her, crying as she couldn’t figure out a puzzle, horrified that Light was going to die because of her.

“So. The important thing here is that Grandpa Light, Grandpa Aoi, Akane, and I had all been in the first Nonary Game. I didn’t see any of the participants again for nine, almost ten years. And then, on my eighteenth birthday, I was kidnapped  _ again _ , this time by someone who called themself Zero. When I woke up, I was in a room that was quickly filling with water, and Grandpa Light was there with me. We’d been in a room just like it before, so we escaped pretty quickly. For some reason, the puzzle to get out was the exact same as it had been nine years ago.

“We made our way out of the flooded room and up some stairs to the C deck of the ship. There were three other people already there, and I didn’t recognize any of them. One of them was Grandpa Aoi, but I had never seen him before and Light is blind, so he didn’t recognize Aoi. The other two were… well, we all went by codenames that related to the numbers on our bracelets. So the other two people there were Ace and Nine. At the time, it seemed like only Light and I knew what was going on, but we’d been told by Zero not to say anything, so we pretended we were confused, too.

“Pretty soon, everyone else came up to C deck. Lotus, Seven, June, and finally, Grandpa. He was the only one without a code name, actually, because he and June knew each other. He’d gone to school with her when they were kids, and she said his name out loud before we realized that Zero might be listening in on us.” Clover giggled. “Well, I guess Seven wasn’t really using a code name, since he didn’t even remember who he was. And I didn’t have a code name, either, but nobody knew that. A clover has four leaves, so I just told them my name.”

“What was Grandpa Aoi’s codename? And what about Grandpa Light?” Quark asks, completely enraptured by the story. Clover glances down at Quark’s food. He’s eaten about half of the pasta, actually, which was more than she’d expected.

Clover grins. “Grandpa Aoi had the number three bracelet, so we called him Santa, since san means three in Japanese. And Grandpa Light had the number two bracelet, so he went by Snake, for snake eyes when you roll double ones with two dice.”

“Wow, cool!” Quark’s eyes are practically sparkling.

“Zero told us that we had nine hours to escape. The rules were pretty much the same as in the first game, except Zero didn’t tell us all the rules. And we were all adults. The thing about kids is, when you put them in a near-death situation like that, they fight and cry but eventually they trust each other. Adults don’t do that, as I quickly learned. As soon as we got to the number four and five doors, Nine grabbed me and held a knife to my throat. He made Ace and me scan our bracelets and then he scanned his own so that he could open the door.”

“That sounds so scary! Were you all right?” Quark asks.

“Yup. He kept his word, at least. Once we scanned our bracelets, he let me go. But…” Clover sighs. “He didn’t realize that me and Ace had to go through the door with him. He went alone. And after eighty one seconds passed… he died. He was kind of a jerk, but that didn’t mean I wanted him  _ dead _ . Junpei opened the door to double check, and...” Clover makes a disgusted face at the memory. “Um, let’s just say that Grandpa Light is really lucky that he can’t see. It was bad.

“After that, we moved quickly. We split up into two groups and went through the doors. The puzzles were a lot easier for adults than they were for kids, so we worked pretty quickly. It also helped that I knew the answers to some of the puzzles, but of course I pretended that I didn’t. After a little while, the two paths met up again, and we found the next set of doors. But the scanners were missing pieces that they needed to work, so we all split up to look for them.”

“Why was the scanner broken? Did Zero make a mistake?” Quark asks.

“No, it was intentional. Zero needed us all out of the room so that… something could happen. We didn’t know it at the time, though. It just seemed like another part of the puzzle to us. When we all met back up, Grandpa Light was missing. We waited, and he never showed up, so we split up again to look for him, but we couldn’t find him.”

Clover bites her bottom lip. She doesn’t want to make Quark even sadder, so… she has to be careful about how she presents this next part.

“We had no choice but to go through the doors without him. But we had a problem. With the number two bracelet and number nine bracelet missing, there were no combinations that would get us all through the doors in front of us. Everyone else thought that the path wouldn’t circle back around, so it felt like we were leaving someone behind to die. Ace volunteered to stay, and I went through the number seven door with Seven and Grandpa.

“I knew by this point that something bad had happened to Grandpa Light. There was no way he would leave me on my own, and he’s blind, so other people might have thought he’d be an easy target. I thought that maybe Zero was killing off the people who’d been in the first Nonary Game one by one. If so, I’d be next. I was really scared. 

“But Grandpa noticed, and he cheered me up. He actually told me something that Light had said nine years before to get all the kids to cooperate, although he didn’t know it at the time. It turns out Grandpa Aoi had repeated those words to Grandpa so that he could say them to me and make me feel better. That’s when I started to think that Grandpa Aoi might’ve been in the first Nonary Game, too.”

“What did he say to you?” Quark asks eagerly.

“A four leaf clover has four leaves. Each one stands for something different: hope, faith, love, and luck. He told me that if I had faith and hope in my brother, I’d get to see him again,” Clover says, smiling fondly at the memory. Junpei had been so  _ nice _ for no reason at all. He’d really helped her get through those few hours.

Quark’s eyebrows furrow. “I think I’ve heard Grandpa Light say those words before. He was holding a bookmark with a clover in it.”

Clover raises her eyebrows. “Oh, he still has that? That’s the bookmark Grandpa Aoi gave to Grandpa, and Grandpa then gave to me to make me feel better. I can’t believe they kept it all this time.”

“Perhaps it reminds him of you, Clover,” K says gently.

Poor Light. He’d been waiting for so, so long. “Yeah. I bet it does,” she says softly.

“What happened to Grandpa Light? Did you find him?” Quark asks.

“Um, kind of. The number seven and eight doors ended up connecting back to the room that we’d started in, where we’d left Ace. I wanted to go through the third door in there, the number three door, just to make sure Grandpa Light wasn’t behind it, so Ace and Seven came with me. And we…” Clover closes her eyes. “We found a… it wasn’t even a body anymore. It was just Grandpa Light’s clothes in a puddle of blood and bones. I couldn’t even look at it.”

“Huh? But Grandpa Light’s alive,” Quark points out with a frown.

“Yeah. The body we found wasn’t his. But it had his clothes, and we couldn’t tell who it was from the face or anything, so we thought it was him. I… don’t really remember a lot after that. I was really, really sad. I went through the number one door with Grandpa and Ace, but I wasn’t even paying attention. Grandpa did the whole puzzle on his own. He was really nice about it, too. He kept trying to make me feel better.

“As we were solving the puzzles, we walked into a room that would lead back to the rest of the ship, and… there was another dead body. I didn’t recognize the person, but at least we could see his face. Grandpa started examining the body to see if we could figure anything out, and as he was rambling, he said something that made me realize that the dead body we found wasn’t Grandpa Light’s. It couldn’t be, because it had a left arm bone.”

“Oh, and Grandpa Light has a prosthetic arm,” Quark says, nodding. “Wow, that was really smart thinking. But then, where was Grandpa Light?”

“Don’t worry, we found him eventually. Once we met back up with the others, they told us that they had found the number nine door behind the number six door, so we all went to take a look. We ended up in this room that was like a chapel of some kind. There were two number nine doors, enough for all of us to escape. Except the numbers didn’t add up. We needed Grandpa Light’s bracelet to be able to split into two groups.

“And then, Grandpa Aoi did something really unexpected. He grabbed June and put a gun to her head, and he made Ace and Lotus go through one of the doors with him and June. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was actually forcing us to leave behind the people who could go through the other number nine door if Grandpa Light was with us. 

“Seven, Grandpa, and I were left behind, and we didn’t really know what to do. Then, we heard a banging noise coming from a coffin in the back of the room. It was  _ super _ creepy. Grandpa walked up to it and there was a keypad on it to put in a code to unlock it. But we had already used up all of the clues we’d found in other puzzles, so we didn’t know what to do. It felt like we’d hit a dead end.”

Clover pauses dramatically. “Nice job, Quark! Now drink some water.”

“Aw, come on. You can’t leave off right there!” Quark complains.

Clover giggles. “I can do whatever I want to.”

“Here,” K says, his voice slightly amused. He hands Quark a glass of water.

“How’d you figure out the code?” Sigma asks, and Clover almost laughs at how engaged Sigma is by the story. He’s almost as enthusiastic as Quark.

“Grandpa stared at the keypad for a little bit… and then he started pushing the buttons on the side of his watch, as if he just  _ knew _ to do it. A sequence of numbers showed up, and he entered them into the keypad on the coffin. The lid slid off just like that,” Clover says, making sure to be as dramatic as possible for both Sigma and Quark.

“What was it? What was in the coffin?” Quark says eagerly.

“It was Grandpa Light. He was wearing these weird robes, and he was really confused. Someone had knocked him out while we were looking for the scanner parts, and then stole his clothes and put him in the coffin. Someone had  _ wanted _ us to think that Grandpa Light was dead.”

“What would they gain from that?” Phi wonders aloud.

“We had no idea. It didn’t make sense at all. But the ship was starting to fill with water, so we didn’t have time to think about it. We went through the other number nine door and through a library to a room that looked like it might be Zero’s workshop. And in there, Seven finally got his memory back. Between him, me, and Grandpa Light, we were able to put together what happened in the first Nonary Game, and we realized who Zero was.”

“Who was it? Who was it?” Quark is practically bouncing up and down.

“To tell you that, I need to explain what happened at the end of the first Nonary Game. I wasn’t actually there, but Grandpa Light and Grandpa Aoi were there, and so were Seven and Akane. Seven was a detective at the time, and he’d been looking for all of us who were kidnapped, so he’d ended up on the ship somehow. He spent most of the nine hours knocked out, but he woke up just in time.

“See, the last room on the ship, the room with the door to escape, is an incinerator with the true number nine door. But only five people can go through that door. The other four would be left behind to burn to death.” Clover remembers Aoi’s nightmares with a shudder. He dreamed of Akane burning to ashes  _ constantly _ .

“That’s terrible,” K says, hand over his (metallic) mouth.

“Over in the building I was in, we only had one door, too. We were terrified. We didn’t know who to send and who to leave behind. How could we make a choice like that? But on the ship, Seven broke into the incinerator through a vent. Five of the kids went through the door, and the other four went through the vent: Grandpa Aoi, Grandpa Light, Akane, and one of Lotus’ daughters, Nona.”

“Oh, I’ve met Auntie Nona! She’s really nice! She likes to make Grandpa Aoi mad,” Quark says.

Clover laughs. “Yeah, there’s a reason for that. I’ll get there.”

“So four of the kids escaped with Seven, and five of the kids got out. What’s the problem?” Sigma asks.

“The way the puzzle was supposed to work is we were supposed to solve a sudoku puzzle to shut off the incinerator. But we didn’t do that, and the scientists got mad. In my building, they turned the incinerator off, sent us all out, and kept one person in to do the sudoku again. On the ship…” Clover bites her lip. She’s seen this scene from Aoi’s perspective so many times in his dreams. “On the ship, Seven and his group had found the stairs that led out of the ship and were running away when Akane realized that she’d dropped something. She ran back towards the incinerator without telling anyone, and Grandpa Aoi didn’t notice that she was missing until it was too late.”

“Wait, she didn’t…” Sigma’s too afraid to say it.

“When Grandpa Aoi, Grandpa Light, and Seven got back to the incinerator, they saw the person who’d led the whole project, Gentarou Hongou, dragging Akane back into the incinerator. The door closed just as they got to her, locking her in, and then the incinerator countdown started again,” Clover says grimly.

“But Akane lived, did she not?” K asks, confused.

“Kind of. Remember, Akane was supposed to be in the same building as me. She was a transmitter. So she didn’t have anyone who was transmitting the answers to her, and she was panicking because it was really hot in the incinerator and she knew she was running out of time. So she… well, I don’t know. Grandpa Light remembers her burning to death. Seven remembers her escaping. Grandpa Aoi remembers both scenarios, where she does and doesn’t finish the sudoku.” Clover shakes her head and shrugs. 

“When we were discussing it in Zero’s workshop, the consensus was that Akane had died. Seven also remembered who Grandpa Aoi was, and who the three dead men were. They were all people who’d put together the first Nonary Game. And Ace was Hongou, the man who had basically killed Akane. So we thought that Grandpa Aoi was Zero, and he’d put this game together for revenge.”

“Grandpa Aoi wouldn’t do that!” Quark cries.

Clover bites back a smile. Aoi definitely  _ would _ do things to get revenge, but Quark didn’t need to know that. “We’d only known him for eight and a half hours, or eighteen hours in Grandpa Light’s case. We had no clue what he would or wouldn’t do. But there was something else confusing about that theory. Remember how I said Grandpa knew June from his childhood? Well, he told us that June’s name was Akane Kurashiki, the same girl who’d died in the incinerator. Or hadn’t.”

“It’s a Schrodinger’s cat situation,” Phi says, deep in thought. “Until you open the box, you don’t know whether she lived or died.”

“Yeah. But we didn’t know that. We were just really confused. With all that in mind, we finally got the keys we needed to get to the incinerator, and we caught up to the others. Grandpa Aoi was on the ground in pain, June was sitting against the wall with a fever, and Ace was holding a gun to Lotus’ head.”

“You’re telling me this guy knew that Ace was the person who’d killed his sister, and he  _ still _ let his guard down enough to  _ lose the gun _ ?” Sigma says, exasperated.

Clover giggles. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure he intended for it to happen. See, Ace had picked up the number nine bracelet when Nine had died, and now he had Lotus and himself, which meant he could open the number nine door. Or so he thought, but when he tried to scan the three bracelets, the door didn’t let him through. He tried again, and again, but the door wouldn’t open. Seven used that opportunity to tackle him and get the gun back. Lotus ran out of Ace’s reach, and then Grandpa basically stole Ace’s evil monologue from him and explained how Ace had been manipulated to kill all three of the men we found dead. It was pretty cool.”

“What about Aoi? Was he Zero?” Phi asks, and Clover can tell from the way she asks the question that she doesn’t think it’s that straightforward. Man, her intuition is really good.

“Well, we asked him about it. And he said we were right about almost everything, except he wasn’t Zero. He was Zero’s assistant. Then he grabbed the gun, threatened to shoot us if we moved, and dragged Ace out of the incinerator. That was when we realized that June was missing, too. And then… the incinerator countdown started.”

“Grandpa Aoi tried to burn you alive?” Quark says incredulously.

Clover grins. “Don’t worry, I made him pay for it later. He had a good reason, kind of. But at the time, we were all pretty sure we were going to die. We couldn’t get through the number nine door, after all, because Ace had shown that it wasn’t actually a number nine door like it had been in the first game. We had no clue what number the scanner was actually looking for.

“Then, something really strange happened. Grandpa started yelling out to Akane, as if he could hear her. The rest of us were really confused, but it looked like he was doing something important, so we left him to it. The sudoku puzzle rose out of the ground, and Lotus turned it on. Then, Grandpa started frantically solving it, and he was talking to Akane the whole time. Grandpa Light realized that he was talking to the Akane from nine years ago as she was standing in the incinerator. He used the morphic fieldset to save her life.”

“That’s what Akane meant in the recording,” Phi realizes. Clover has no idea what she means, but it must have to do with whatever they saw behind the white doors.

“Grandpa told us later that apparently young Akane had been resonating with him the whole time he was on the ship. She’d watched everything he’d done, seen every timeline that came from the choices he made, and then used those timelines to feed him the right information he needed to get to the incinerator. And then, once he was there, she begged him to save her life.

“Grandpa solved the sudoku and gave Akane the answers, stopping the incinerator for her. But the incinerator didn’t stop  _ for us _ for some reason, and we were running out of time. At the last instant, Grandpa realized that the nine on the door was actually a lowercase q, and he told us to all scan our bracelets. We deactivated the incinerator mere seconds before we burned to death,” Clover says dramatically.

“Wait, but you really could’ve died in there, right? What if Tenmyouji hadn’t solved the puzzle?” Sigma points out.

“Uh, I guess in that timeline, we all died except for Aoi and Ace?” Clover shrugs.

“How can you say that so casually? You  _ died _ ,” Sigma says loudly.

Clover bites her thumb. “Well, there’s probably timelines out there where all of us died in this Nonary Game, right? And there’s probably timelines where all of us live, too. It’s usually pretty hard to know which choices put us on each timeline, but generally speaking, for every choice you make, there’s a timeline out there where you make a different choice.”

“Is there a Grandpa out there who survives this game and gets to go home with you and me?” Quark asks.

“Yeah. There’s a Grandpa out there who gets to go home with us,” Clover says softly with a smile.

“Then I hope that the Quark who’s with him knows how lucky he is,” Quark says, oddly at peace.

“I’m sure he does,” Clover says warmly.

“So Akane was Zero?” Phi asks.

Clover nods. “Yup. And once we got out, we realized that we were actually in the same building that I’d been in nine years ago. Which makes a lot of sense, since the ship had sunk nine years ago. And our bracelets hadn’t actually been able to kill us like we thought they would. It was all to give the illusion of the threat of death so that Junpei would be able to access the morphic fieldset.”

“The illusion… of the threat of death…” Sigma trails off, deep in thought.

“Clearly she didn’t care to be that nice to us this time around,” Clover says bitterly. She still hates Akane for making Junpei go through everything he did to find her again. And  _ now _ she hates Akane for making Light suffer, too.

“But she’s not Zero. Sigma is,” Phi says, turning to Sigma. “Or rather, future Sigma is. If people can send their consciousness through time, like Akane was talking about in the recording, then future Sigma probably sent his back to 2028, when you were kidnapped, and that’s how you ended up in his old man body.”

“I believe Akane’s letter mentioned something to that effect. She said that Tenmyouji had met sixty seven year old Sigma, did she not?” K muses.

Clover grins. “Oh my god, that’s what he meant. When Junpei was resonating with me, he called you a headass. I was really confused, because it was forty year old Junpei, who hadn’t been here yet. But he must’ve meant sixty seven year old Sigma, who he met in the  _ past _ .”

“Given that sixty seven year old me trapped us all in this facility and made us play a game where we could  _ actually die _ , I can believe that he’s a headass,” Sigma admits.

“Now the question is, when in the path did we meet? Where are we going, and what are we supposed to do?” Phi thinks aloud.

A near death experience, right? That’s what is needed to send them to the past. Hmm. Clover doesn’t really have any weapons nearby. Actually, Luna and K can probably handle it. This isn’t  _ her _ problem.

“Akane’s letter said there’s something in the garden. Maybe you should look there.” Clover turns to Quark. “So, are you ready to leave?”

“Huh? Wait, what? Are you guys just  _ leaving us here? _ ” Sigma cries.

Clover shakes her head. “Luna knows how to get you back to Earth if that’s what you end up wanting to do. But if you send yourselves to the past, your future selves will come back, right? And who knows where  _ they _ live.”

“Oh, yeah…” Sigma frowns. “Well, I guess there’s no point for the two of you to stay here, then.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Clover stands up. “C’mon, Quark, we’re going to find Luna.”

“Okay,” Quark says. He doesn't seem to want to stay here any longer than Clover does.

She can’t wait to leave this wretched place behind.


	9. Tenmyouji Route: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Tenmyouji can't catch a break, again.

When they get to the warehouse, Dio and K are already there. “Oh, you’re actually on time for once,” Dio says as they walk up. “Wait. Quark? And what the hell happened to Alice?”

“Alice has Radical-6,” Luna says grimly.

“The rest of us might have it as well,” Phi adds.

“I hope that I do not have Radical-6. There is no way to inject anything through my suit,” K muses.

“We don’t know anything for sure. For now, it’s best to be careful,” Sigma says, and he gently lays Alice on the ground. “So, which team goes through which doors?”

“All of the doors are identical for this round. I believe it doesn't matter which team uses which door,” K says.

“Then we’re taking the one in the middle,” Dio says firmly.

Phi turns to him with a puzzled look. “Why that one?”

“You want a kill-shot, you aim for the center. You’re more likely to just miss the extremities.”

Phi makes a disgusted face. “That logic is flawed and more than slightly disturbing. Unfortunately, I don't really have a counterargument, so center door it is.”

Luna turns to K and Clover. “I suppose we could go with the one on the left… Is that okay? I mean, we could go with the other one if you want…”

“Fine with me,” Clover says with a shrug. It doesn’t really matter who goes through which door, does it? They’ll all meet up at the end, anyway.

“That leaves us with the door on the right,” Quark says.

“Any objections?” Phi asks.

Tenmyouji’s gaze briefly falls on Dio, then on the center door. “Wait. There’s something I want to settle first.”

“Well, you better settle it quickly. The Chromatic Doors are going to open soon,” Dio says, gesturing to his bracelet for emphasis.

Tenmyouji smiles grimly. “All right, then. But you’re the one who asked for it.”

Clover has never fought alongside Junpei. She doesn’t know how he moves, or which side he favors, or any actual details that would help. But she  _ does _ know how he fares in a pillow fight, and which side he sleeps on more, and how to tell when he’s having a nightmare. So when Tenmyouji’s body tenses in preparation, Clover gets ready.

And at the same time, they both run towards Dio.

“Whoa, whoa, hey what are you—”

Dio doesn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. Clover kicks him in the knees to unbalance him, and in one smooth motion, Tenmyouji grabs his arm and injects the Soporil. Dio falls to the ground in seconds.

“What the hell?” Phi yells angrily.

“He said to settle it quickly,” Tenmyouji says, as if that explains anything.

“Settle  _ what _ ?” Sigma asks. A foolish question.

Tenmyouji ignores Sigma completely and hands the injection gun to Luna. “Here. If Clover gets infected, knock her out.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You can’t just knock Dio out and then give us no reason for it!” Sigma shouts.

“He killed the old woman. And he’s an asshole,” Tenmyouji says.

Clover leans down and starts to search Dio’s body.

“If there’s a detonator in there, don’t pull it out. It’ll explode if it’s a meter away from him,” Tenmyouji warns.

“Let me guess. You  _ just know _ that,” Phi says, giving Tenmyouji a withering look.

“You’re welcome to test it. But if I’m right, we’ll all die,” Tenmyouji says casually.

“Hmm…” Clover’s hands close around a square-shaped device. Nope, nope, not moving that. She keeps searching and finds a pill, which she does pull out because she’s pretty sure pills don’t explode. “What’s this? Some sort of medicine?”

“More importantly, why does Dio have  _ anything _ on him? All of us had our stuff taken from us,” Phi says with a frown.

Tenmyouji shrugs. “Maybe Dio wasn’t supposed to be here.”

Sigma looks at the pill and his eyes widen. “Shit.”

“Oh, do you just  _ know _ something, too?” Tenmyouji says with a smirk.

Sigma ignores him. “That’s a suicide pill. Dio was going to take it if we tried to get any information out of him about the bombs.”

“Well, that must be what the detonator is for,” Clover says with a shrug. “What am I supposed to do with this? I haven’t seen a single trash can since we got here.”

“Who cares, as long as you don’t eat it,” Tenmyouji says dismissively. Clover gives him a look.

The PA dings. “Five minutes until Chromatic Doors open.”

“What did you mean when you said that Dio killed the old woman?” K asks.

Tenmyouji sighs. “I can’t prove it now. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one. I can tell you her name, though. Akane Kurashiki.”

“ _ Akane _ ?” Clover speaks before she can stop herself.

“Yeah. That’s her name. What, you know someone named Akane?” Tenmyouji asks, turning to her with a blank stare.

Asshole.

“I live with her brother,” Clover responds, figuring it won’t make the others too suspicious.

Phi starts dragging Dio over to the door in the middle. Clover realizes that she has two unconscious people she has to get through the doors. Wow, sucks to be her.

“If anyone finds any Axelavir, don’t use it yet. If we have one vial, we can make more,” Tenmyouji says.

“With the IG replicator in the lab,” Sigma thinks aloud.

Clover grins. “How would you know that, Sigma? You haven’t been to the lab,” she says innocently.

Sigma holds his head in his hands. “I  _ hate _ this!” he yells to nobody in particular.

Clover and Tenmyouji both burst out laughing.

“Did I look like that when I first figured it out?” Tenmyouji asks.

“Hmm. I don’t think you had time to. We were kind of on a countdown in an incinerator, you know?” Clover says nonchalantly.

The PA dings again. “Chromatic Doors have opened. Five minutes until Chromatic Doors close.”

“Time to go,” Phi says as she starts dragging Alice’s body over next.

“I still have many questions for both of you, but I will save them for later,” K says, and even through the armor, Clover can tell that he’s very confused by everything that just happened.

“I can explain stuff while we’re doing puzzles,” Clover says. “C’mon, Luna.”

“Right.” Luna, K, and Clover walk to the left door.

As the doors close, Clover wonders how Akane Kurashiki factors into all this nonsense. Is she Zero? Why did she die? There’s no way it’s a coincidence that Akane, Junpei, and her are all here.

Somehow, she gets the sense that there’s time loops involved. She grasps at the morphic fieldset for more, but nothing comes up. Damn. Well, she can wait. Junpei will explain everything.

~*~

By the time they finish the puzzles in the Director’s Room, Tenmyouji is pretty overwhelmed by the need to die. But Quark is here, and he is  _ not _ going to let Quark watch him try to kill himself. He can’t. Quark is a child. Quark is  _ his _ child. And, hell, this isn’t the first time Tenmyouji has had to resist the urge to do something. After all, he used to be an alcoholic.

The world keeps snapping in and out of focus as things speed up, slow down, speed up, slow down. It’s hard to focus. But it’s not any worse than the goddamn hallucinations that Tenmyouji dealt with for  _ years _ . He’s gotten pretty good at implying what’s going on from very little context.

“Grandpaiseverythingokayyoulook really tired,” Quark says.

Tenmyouji squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath. “I’m… starting to feel the effects of Radical-6,” he says through gritted teeth, surprising himself with his own honesty.

“Shit, do I need todoanythingIcantryandrestrainyou if I need to,” Sigma says, and Tenmyouji can’t tell if the guy is actually worried or if he just sounds worried because of Tenmyouji’s slowed-down processing speed.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “I can hold it off. Let’s just get out of here quickly.”

“Um, Mr. Sigma, this thing inthecornerjustlitup,” Quark says, pointing to the metallic disk in the corner of the room. A hologram appears, and Tenmyouji has to blink a couple times to see the hologram clearly.

“I am Zero.”

It’s Sigma.

Quark wisely waits until the projection is done talking to say anything. “Grandpa… isn’t that Mr. Sigma?”

“Yeah. It is.” Tenmyouji closes his eyes again. His head is killing him and he’s starting to get really dizzy from trying to understand what’s going on while the world is moving so quickly. Sigma says something, but Tenmyouji doesn’t hear it.

“Sigma,” Tenmyouji’s voice is shaking. He wants so, so badly to convince them to die with him. But no. Quark. Quark is here. He has to live for Quark. Tenmyouji takes a deep breath and tries again. “How… old are you…?”

“I’m twenty two,” Sigma answers, and luckily, Quark is there to do the rest of the talking. Tenmyouji leans against the wall and closes his eyes. He’s struggling to stay awake. If he just passes out, Sigma can carry him to the infirmary, right? He’ll live. He just…

Wait. Sigma is Zero. If the others learn this information, there’s going to be chaos.

“Sigma. Quark. Don’t… say anything about this… to the others yet,” Tenmyouji manages to get out.

“Grandpaareyousureyou’reokayyoulookreallyreallytiredmaybeyoushould—”

“Please stop talking.” Tenmyouji focuses on the ground beneath him, the wall behind him, the feeling of his hands against the wooden wall. He feels Quark take his hand and he relaxes instinctively. He’s not… going to die. He doesn’t need to kill himself to get out of this. The voice that’s screaming in his head to end it is wrong. It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s—

Tenmyouji takes another deep breath. “Quark, I can’t see.”

Quark doesn’t say anything, but he squeezes Tenmyouji’s hand, and in that moment, Tenmyouji is so glad that Quark has seen him have nightmares before. That’s the only reason he knows what to do when this happens, when Tenmyouji’s sight betrays him. Quark tugs Tenmyouji’s arm gently, then starts to lead him out of the room. Tenmyouji lets Quark navigate. He trusts Quark.

He’s not going to kill himself while Quark is holding his hand. He won’t.

He can’t.

He still has to give the envelope to Clover.

He doesn’t open his eyes until Quark squeezes his hand again. They’re in the infirmary. Clover is asleep on the bed next to Akane, probably sedated. She’s safe. She’ll  _ live _ .

“Grandpa, can you hear me? There’s no beds open, but you can sit down on the floor,” Quark whispers.

Tenmyouji doesn’t need to be told twice. Even standing is so much effort. He practically collapses onto the floor. “Sorry.”

“What are you apologizing for? You’re amazing. Nobody else can fight off Radical-6 the way you’re doing right now, Grandpa,” Quark says slowly and quietly so that Tenmyouji can hear every word. Quark is such a good kid. “You can go to sleep. Phi found some Axelavir.”

Tenmyouji hates sleeping, but he doesn’t think he can hold the symptoms off for much longer. If he stays awake, he’s going to die.

“I love you, Quark,” Tenmyouji says softly, and then he lets himself drift off into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a side note, you may notice that Quark ending is missing from this fic. Just imagine that Quark ending goes a lot like this does, except they're also trapped there forever because the number nine door is closed.


	10. K Route / Tenmyouji Route: Ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best to format this so that it makes sense. The ending for these two routes ended up being pretty similar, so I just combined them and put any dialogue that differs in brackets. For example, you'll see something like
> 
> [K route:   
> words words words  
> ]  
> [Tenmyouji route:  
> words words word  
> ]
> 
> which will show how the dialogue differs slightly based on the situation.

[ **K route** :

Once Tenmyouji knows that Clover and Quark are okay, he feels all the tension drain from his body, and the adrenaline high begins to wear off. He slumps to the ground next to Quark and closes his eyes.

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** :

Tenmyouji wakes up in the lab. His headache has dissipated slightly, and his vision has returned mostly to normal. He reaches into his shirt pocket and finds that the envelope is gone. Quark must have given it to Clover. Smart kid.

]

He’s exhausted. That isn’t surprising, though. He hasn’t eaten or drank anything since entering this goddamn building. He’ll get the chance soon enough. Clover’s and Quark’s health are his first priority. His own health doesn’t matter as much, now that he’s fulfilled his promise to Light and Aoi.

He’s so tired. So, so tired. His bones ache. His head is pounding. Radical-6 sure hadn’t done him any favors. He has no idea how Light managed to survive so long with such a burning desire to die.

(Or maybe, that was the secret. Light had lost his will to live the moment Clover had been taken to the moon.)

“Tenmyouji? Are you okay?” Tenmyouji opens his eyes. Luna is standing in front of him and giving him a worried look.

[ **K route** :

“It’s been kind of a rough day,” Tenmyouji answers wearily.

“You could take a nap. I can wake you up when Quark wakes up,” Luna offers.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. If he falls asleep here, there’s no knowing what matter of bullshit he’ll see in his dreams. The nightmares come and go, but Tenmyouji has no doubt that they’ll come today. “I’ll be all right. I’ve gone longer than this without sleep.”

“After being terribly injured and catching a life-threatening illness?” Luna asks.

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** :

“A little tired, but I’ll live. Not the worst I’ve ever been,” Tenmyouji says, but he doesn’t even sound convincing to himself. Damn, being old sucks.

Luna smiles. “You don’t have to pretend to be okay. A lot has happened the last few days.”

]

Tenmyouji hates that there have actually been other times in his life that could compete with such a shitty sequence of events. “Yeah, well, this is my third time playing a game like this. The first time was a Nonary Game. That’s where I met Clover. And the second one was a whole hell of a lot worse than what we just went through.”

“You’ve been through  _ three _ of these? Why the hell didn’t you say something earlier?” Sigma asks, having apparently listened in on their conversation.

“The first game is completely unrelated to this one. I can guarantee it. And the second one wasn’t a Nonary Game. It was… a game that wasn’t meant to be won,” Tenmyouji says, grimacing at the memory of being executed, shot to death, forced to play games that you could only win by chance. “It’s not something I like to remember.”

“Oh, uh, sorry,” Sigma says apologetically. “I just thought maybe it would help us figure out why we were here in this game.”

A plan forms in Tenmyouji’s mind. It’s a bit of a stretch, but it might work, and he needs the information. He has some guesses about what might be going on here, but he doesn’t want to act without certainty. “Is there any pen and paper around here? I have an idea.”

“Um, I think I saw some over on the shelf,” Sigma says, and he walks over to the back of the room. A moment later, he returns with a notebook and a pencil and hands them to Junpei. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to get some answers,” Tenmyouji says. “I’ll need peace and quiet. I don’t want to accidentally throw my younger self into this shithole permanently.”

[ **K route** : 

“Um, sure. We can look after Quark and Phi in the meantime,” Luna says with a nod.

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** : 

“Grandpa, are you going to SHIFT?” Quark asks.

“Yeah. Might take a little while.” Tenmyouji gives Quark the most reassuring smile he can manage. “You’re in charge while I’m out, okay?”

Quark nods, his expression suddenly serious. It’s adorable.

]

Tenmyouji closes his eyes and gets ready to SHIFT.

Tenmyouji hasn’t ever tried to SHIFT backwards, and especially not forty five years in the past. Epiphany and danger, right?  _ Six million people die because of the Decision Game _ , Junpei thinks to himself. He focuses on that thought as hard as he can, and then imagines the night that he’d tried (and failed) to talk to Akane while they were still in DCOM. He wants to  _ be _ there. He wants to see it. No, he  _ needs _ to.

When Tenmyouji opens his eyes, he can see two realities. He can feel the cold metal floor of the laboratory, and he can see the notebook in his lap, but he can more vividly see the hallways of the Mars test site. His younger self is walking to Akane’s room, although as soon as Tenmyouji initiates the shift, he stumbles and leans against the wall for support. Tenmyouji takes the time to look around the lab, making sure to look specifically at Phi and at Clover. Then, he turns his head down to the notebook.

_ Junpei, I’m you from the future. You’ve figured out that these hallucinations of yours are all future timelines, right? _ Tenmyouji writes on the notepad.

Junpei looks around nervously, then mutters, “Yeah. I’ve never had one like  _ this _ before, though.”

_ That’s because I initiated it. Usually, you initiate these connections on accident, so you have less control over them. I’m here because I need your help. I need you to talk to Akane for me. _

“Uh, if you’re future me, then you should know that she refuses to tell me anything,” Junpei says out loud. Tenmyouji can feel his young self’s bundle of emotions— anger, nervousness, exhaustion, desperation. He remembers it all too well.

_ Hopefully, I can change that. Just try, please. I’ll write out a script of things for you to say. _

“Well, here goes nothing,” Junpei mumbles, and he continues his trek to Akane’s room. He walks up to her door and knocks on it. A moment later, Akane answers.

“Junpei? I’m a little busy right now, so—”

“I… need to talk to you. My future self is, uh, halfway SHIFTed right now and he has some questions for you, but you’re dead in his future.” Junpei gives her a bewildered look and takes a deep breath. He can afford to go off-script for a little bit. “Uh, okay. I swear this isn’t a joke. I get these… hallucinations, sometimes. Of other timelines, or of… futures? I think? I’m not sure how it works, but this is the first time I’m seeing something normal instead of something gruesome and fucked up, so I’m pretty sure that I’m not going insane and making this up.”

Akane pauses, hesitant. Junpei doesn’t really blame her. With his lack of sleep, he probably looks like a madman.

“He, uh, wants to talk to you about the AB Project.” Junpei scratches his head. “Can I come in? This is going to be a weird conversation to have in the hallway.”

Akane’s eyes widen at the mention of the AB project, and finally, she opens her door all the way. “All right. Come in.”

Junpei walks into the room. As Tenmyouji expects, Sigma and Phi are there, too, and they both startle at his appearance.

Sigma stands up. “Akane, are you sure we can let this—”

“Uh, apparently, we’ve met? In my future and your… future that’s now your past? Assuming my future self’s guess is correct,” Junpei says, then shakes his head. “I hope those words made sense to you, because they make no sense to me at all. I’m just reading off a notebook he’s writing on.”

Sigma and Phi both look over at Akane, who shrugs. “I didn’t think it was possible to… halfway SHIFT. How are you doing this, Junpei?”

“Apparently, it’s because I have Reverie Syndrome and a… hey, what the hell does this mean?” Junpei groans. “A distinct lack of control over my own esper abilities.”

Akane giggles. “That sounds like something you would write about yourself.”

“Hey. Junpei. Does this future self of yours go by Tenmyouji?” Phi asks bluntly.

Junpei nods. “Yeah. He says he has a grandson named Quark?”

“Okay. Yeah, we’ve met him,” Phi says. “He didn’t seem to recognize us, though.”

“That might be Akane’s fault. She…” Junpei pauses. “Are you sure I should be telling her this? Ugh, fine. She tried to erase his memory after this DCOM experiment was over.” Junpei gives Akane a bewildered look. “What the hell, Akane?”

“That’s in our future. I have no idea why I would do such a thing,” Akane says innocently.

Junpei wrinkles his nose, then says begrudgingly, “Future me would like you to know that you’re a bastard.”

Akane giggles again. “Well, then, he most certainly must be from the future. I can’t imagine you saying that to me at any point in the present or past.”

Junpei pauses to read, then lets out an exasperated sigh. “Uh… okay, this all looks like nonsense to me, but hopefully it makes sense to you guys. He wants to know what the purpose of the AB project is. He says that since you’re dead, Akane, they don’t really know what this game was supposed to do.”

“What does he  _ think _ it’s supposed to do?” Akane says playfully.

For once, both Tenmyouji and Junpei want to smack her.

“He says, uh, that he thinks it has to do with SHIFTing because the Sigma in his future is an old man but thinks he’s a college student, and the Sigma he remembers at DCOM was exactly the opposite.” Junpei looks up at Sigma. “Does this have to do with that weird thing you said about six billion people dying in the future?”

Sigma nods. “Phi and I SHIFTed from the time period that Tenmyouji is in right now to try and stop Radical-6 from getting out.  _ That _ is the purpose of the AB project.”

Tenmyouji sighs and puts his pencil down for a moment. Leave it to Akane to do something so convoluted for something so simple. Okay, back to writing.

“He doesn’t know if this Sigma and this Phi can make the jump. He isn’t in a timeline where things went perfectly. Sigma and Phi can kind of access the field, but not reliably. Should he still try to send them back?” Junpei reads aloud.

Akane frowns, and Sigma and Phi exchange a look. “If they can’t retain their memories, there’s no point in sending them back. They won’t even know why they’re here in the first place, and I have no guarantee that either of them will believe what I have to say if they don’t remember me.”

“You’re the one who sent us back, Akane,” Phi says. “So maybe that Sigma and Phi aren’t supposed to go back.”

“Hmm. Well, if you’re supposed to send Sigma and Phi to the past, there should be a timeline out there that you can SHIFT to where you’ve sent them to the past,” Akane reasons. “Maybe this timeline isn’t the one directly connected to your future. It’s hard to jump forty-five years back to the exact timeline you want.”

Junpei laughs. “He, uh, says he hates this time loop bullshit.”

Akane smiles fondly. “I’m sure you know this, but if you do choose to send them back, you’ll need to create a near-death experience. I recommend pretending to stab Phi.”

“Where and when are they supposed to jump to?” Junpei asks.

“They don’t need to know that. If they try to jump back forty-five years, they’ll land in the right place,” Akane says confidently.

“Okay. Uh, well, he says thank you, and good luck with DCOM,” Junpei says.

Tenmyouji forces himself back into the present, his present, in the lab. He’s sweating from the exertion of holding a SHIFT in an incomplete state for so long, and when he blinks, he can still see Akane, Sigma, Phi, and himself talking in Akane’s room. It’s always disorienting coming back from a SHIFT, but at least this one had been mundane. His head hurts like hell and he can’t remember anything at all.

Tenmyouji closes his eyes, leans back against the wall, and tries to ground himself. He’s in the lab. He can feel the cold metal floor beneath him, the stiffness of his bloodstained clothes, the complete and utter exhaustion in every fiber of his being. He can hear low voices across the room, although he can’t distinguish them. His senses are still too muddled. He opens his eyes and blinks a few times to clear away the vestiges of the past, to bring back his memories of the present.

“Grandpa? Are you okay?” Quark’s voice cuts through the haze.

“Yeah. I just need a couple of minutes,” Tenmyouji says, trying to sound stronger than he feels. If he closes his eyes again, he might actually pass out.

“Okay.” Quark scoots closer to Tenmyouji and leans against him. Tenmyouji puts a trembling arm around him. 

[ **K route** : 

He’s alive. He’s okay. He’s  _ okay _ .

Tenmyouji doesn’t realize he’s crying until Quark looks up at him again, eyes wide with concern.

“How are you feeling, Quark?” Tenmyouji asks, wiping away his tears before he worries Quark even further.

“I feel great! Um, a little… floaty, though, but that’s probably because we’re on the moon, right?” Quark says with his usual inquisitive smile.

“Smart kid,” Tenmyouji says affectionately.

Quark beams.

]

“Are you ready to talk to everyone? Miss Clover and Mister Sigma had a lot of questions for you,” Quark says.

“Yeah. Can you bring them here? I’m feeling a little tired,” Tenmyouji says. It’s an understatement, but he doesn’t need to worry Quark any further.

“Sure thing, Grandpa.” Quark slips out from under Tenmyouji’s arm and jumps to his feet. “I’ll be right back, okay?”

Tenmyouji smiles and nods. 

[ **K route** : 

Quark runs off to the other side of the lab, and a moment later, he returns with Sigma, Phi, Luna, and Clover.

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** : 

Quark runs off to the other side of the lab, and a moment later, he returns with Sigma, Phi, Luna, Alice, Clover, and someone who looks very much like the Sigma that Tenmyouji met at DCOM. Presumably, this person is K.

]

Clover takes one look at him and a mix of concern and anger flash across her face. Oh, boy. He’s in for a scolding.

“Junpei Tenmyouji, you are the world’s biggest idiot. You look like a dead man,” Clover says fiercely.

“I feel like I’ve heard those words before,” Tenmyouji can’t help but say.

Clover groans in exasperation. “I hate you. I’m going to go find some water and something for you to eat so you don't collapse.” She runs off before Tenmyouji can protest.

“Hmph. Worrywart,” Tenmyouji says fondly, shaking his head in dismay.

“Clover mentioned that the two of you used to live together,” Phi says, cutting to the chase.

Tenmyouji nods. “Yeah, in 2028, for less than a year.”

“So it’s… not 2028 anymore?” Sigma guesses.

“Think about it. You think Clover lived with an old man?”

“Uh… I don’t know, are you also  _ her _ grandpa?” Sigma asks.

“No way. I’m the only kid who lives with Grandpa,” Quark says proudly.

“Clover’s more like a little sister to me. May sound weird to hear that given my age, but, well, it’s not 2028 anymore. It’s 2074,” Tenmyouji says, deciding there was no point in beating around the bush.

“What the hell? You’re saying we’ve been sleeping here for forty five years?” Sigma yells. “That’s insane! There’s no way!”

“Tenmyouji is telling the truth,” Luna says quietly, and all eyes turn to her. “I… live in this facility. I was put in the AB game to try and help things go well. I suppose I didn’t… do a great job of that, though.”

“You did fine. In most timelines, any of us who survive the game probably die of Radical-6, anyway,” Tenmyouji says nonchalantly. “Can’t be sure. I could only see timelines from my point of view, so I don’t have the full picture. Alice almost always kills herself. There’s very few timelines where we’re able to stop her, and in  _ those _ , Dio almost always blows us up.”

“Wow… I guess we’re luckier than I thought,” Phi remarks.

[ **K route** :

“It’s not all luck. If I hadn’t known anything ahead of time, Clover and I would’ve died because we couldn’t get to the white doors in time. Dio chains us to a sink and leaves us there to face the penalty.” Tenmyouji says it with a straight face, but inwardly, he can’t help but feel innate fear at the nightmare that’s haunted him the longest. “Once I stopped that, I had no clue how things were going to go.”

“Wait, but Dio almost  _ killed you _ ,” Sigma says emphatically.

“He… he did?” Quark says anxiously.

“Don’t worry, kiddo, I’m fine. I knew Clover would come to find me once I told her who I was. She’s way too worried about me all the time.”

“That’s because you keep neglecting your health and doing dumb things!” Clover says as she enters the room, beaker of water and tray of food in hand. “Here. Drink.”

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** :

“Yeah. If I hadn’t known ahead of time that Alice was infected with Radical-6, she would be dead right now. In some timelines, I know she’s going to die and I  _ still _ can’t stop her in time,” Tenmyouji says evenly, as if this hasn’t haunted his dreams for years, as if he hadn’t mapped the timelines out on a bulletin board at home and spent months trying to figure out how to keep everyone alive.

“Thank you,” Alice says earnestly.

“Yeah, thanks, but also, you’re stupid,” Clover declares as she walks back into the room with a beaker of water and a tray of food in hand. “Here. Drink.”

]

“Yeah, yeah.” Tenmyouji resists the urge to drink the entire beaker of water all at once, instead opting for small sips.

“Once we get out of here, I’m going to kick your ass,” Clover says firmly.

“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” Tenmyouji says with a smile.

“Okay, so let’s say it’s 2074. How is it that none of us remember the time in between?” Sigma asks.

“Phi, Alice, and Clover were put in cold sleep. K was given a higher dose of Soporil so that he would have amnesia. Dio was probably lying,” Luna says. “And Sigma… um…” Luna looks helplessly at Tenmyouji. Yeah, this one is hard to explain.

“Phi, how old would you say Sigma is?” Tenmyouji asks.

“I don’t know, maybe seventy five?” Phi guesses.

“Wh-what? I’m twenty two!” Sigma splutters.

“Your mind is. Your body isn’t,” Tenmyouji says with an amused smile. “When someone SHIFTs, their consciousness switches places with the version of them that SHIFTed. This older version of you SHIFTed back to 2028 when you got kidnapped, and you got thrown forty five years into the future.”

“Forty five years… so it’s 2074?” Clover asks. Oh, right, she hadn’t been in the room for that.

“Yeah. You and Alice went missing forty five years ago. I tried to ask Akane about it when we were at the Mars test site, but she wouldn’t tell me anything. And then Radical-6 escaped, so I decided to leave you in her hands. At least then, you wouldn’t die from the disease or the aftermath.”

“You trusted  _ Akane _ to keep me safe? What the hell, Junpei?” Clover says angrily.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “It’s not like that. I’d seen glimpses of this future already. I knew we’d see each other again, and for some reason, you were still young but I was old. I figured that meant you’d be in some kind of frozen state while the world went to shit.”

“Okay, so let me get this straight. My sixty seven year old self SHIFTed to my twenty two year old body, which sent me here to his body. Phi, Alice, and Clover were intentionally brought here and put in cold sleep for forty five years. Luna was part of the game, and K lived here. What about you?” Sigma says, raising an eyebrow.

“I got an invitation from Zero. Said if Quark and I didn’t come, Clover would be killed.” Tenmyouji sighs and scratches the back of his head. “I didn’t really have a choice after that.”

“Grandpa told me that if we went to the moon like the invitation said to, I could die if things went wrong, and then he asked what I wanted to do. But I know Miss Clover is really important to Grandpa, and Grandpa Aoi and Grandpa Light care about her a lot, too, so I said we should go,” Quark says way too happily for the circumstances.

“The… moon…?” Clover says slowly.

“Yeah, we’re on the moon. In April 2029, eighteen antimatter plants were simultaneously blown up in a last ditch effort to destroy the virus. It was a stupid plan. Caused a nuclear winter and killed basically all life that was above ground.” Tenmyouji doesn’t bother to hide his distaste. “I bet Akane saw it coming. She likely had you moved to the moon so Sigma could build up the AB project without worrying about the apocalypse.”

There’s a long silence as the horrid truth settles in.

“So, Earth… what is it like now?” Clover asks.

“Everyone who survived the April explosion banded together to survive. Faced a nuclear winter for seven years, which was… rough.” Tenmyouji pushes back the memories of eating scraps, going hungry for days, clearing land of corpses and struggling to grow food. “Things are a lot better now. There’s still a lot of dust in the air, but there’s a few small towns scattered around.”

“You’re not lying, right?” Sigma asks.

Tenmyouji gives Sigma a withering look. “Why the hell would I lie about something like this?”

“You’ve got a point there,” Phi admits.

“Yeah, a great one. Now  _ eat _ !” Clover says, glaring at the unopened container of spaghetti in Tenmyouji’s lap.

Tenmyouji winces. “Why am  _ I _ the only one who has to eat?”

“Because Aoi said so in his letter,” Clover says smugly.

“Asshole,” Tenmyouji mutters, because of  _ course _ Aoi would do that even when he was on his fucking deathbed. He peels back the film on the container. The spaghetti is still warm, and there’s a fork tucked to the side for him to use. “Are you hungry, Quark?”

“Nice try, Grandpa, but Miss Clover already gave me something to eat while you were SHIFTing,” Quark says with a grin.

“Damn, you thought of everything,” Tenmyouji says, glaring at Clover. She smiles proudly.

“Just because you’re an old man now doesn’t mean I’m going to be any nicer to you. Now shut up and eat.”

Tenmyouji puts a forkful of spaghetti in his mouth. He hates to admit it, but he is actually feeling very weak and lightheaded right now, so food isn’t a terrible plan.

“So, Earth has been destroyed because of Radical-6, and Sigma’s sixty seven year old self SHIFTed back to 2028. Maybe old man Sigma was trying to do something about it,” Phi theorizes. Phi had struck Tenmyouji as pretty sharp even though he hadn’t talked to her for long back in 2028. 

“He’s a dick,” Tenmyouji supplies helpfully.

Sigma and Phi both stare at him. Tenmyouji shoves an especially large forkful of spaghetti into his mouth and takes his time. Might as well enjoy this for all it’s worth.

“You’ve  _ met him _ ?” Sigma shouts.

“Yeah. At the Mars test site where the virus first got out,” Tenmyouji says as if he’s not dropping another bombshell of information. He can’t help but smile as Sigma loses his mind over this information. It’s very… satisfying.

“You were going there because Akane was there, right?” Clover asks.

“Yeah. And she was there to stop Radical-6 from escaping.” Tenmyouji shrugs. “Obviously, she failed. Akane and I weren’t even in the room when the virus escaped, so I have no clue how it happened.”

“What  _ do _ you know about the events at the test site?” Sigma asks.

“Can’t tell you. Otherwise you’ll go back and fuck things up,” Tenmyouji says flatly.

“Well, clearly we fucked up anyway, so—”

“No, that’s not what I mean.” Tenmyouji sighs. “For there to be a timeline where Radical-6 doesn’t escape, there also needs to be a timeline where Radical-6  _ does _ escape. Otherwise, you’d never go back to try and fix the problem in the first place.”

Clover scowls. “This time travel stuff is confusing.”

“You don’t have to tell  _ me _ twice. That’s why I don’t SHIFT fully. Too hard to keep track of all the damn specifics.” Tenmyouji takes another bite of spaghetti. He can’t tell if this is really good spaghetti, or if he’s just really fucking hungry.

“What, so I have to go back and purposely mess things up?” Sigma says, frustration clearly etched into his face.

“No, that’s not it, either. You won’t know which timeline you’re in until you make the decisions that lead up to it,” Phi says, eyebrows creased in thought. “But you have to complete the time loop. Right?”

“Well, both of you do,” Tenmyouji says. “You were both there with Akane, and all three of you wouldn’t tell anyone what you were up to. Seems to me like you came back from the future, too.”

“So how do we jump that far?” Phi asks.

“There are two things that help strengthen a person’s connection to the morphogenetic field,” he says.

“If you’re just going to tell them the exact same thing I told you in Building Q, then I’ll do it so you can eat,” Clover says with a huff. 

Tenmyouji chuckles. “I forgot it was you who told me this first. Sure, go ahead.”

“Okay. Ten years ago— um, well, fifty five years ago, I guess, but ten years ago for me— a group of scientists conducted an experiment to try and prove the existence of the morphogenetic field. One of their theories was that you could strengthen a person’s connection to the morphic fieldset with two things: epiphany and danger.”

“What’s an epiphany?” Quark asks curiously. Tenmyouji had forgotten that the kid was listening in. Well, guess you can’t shield kids from everything.

“There’s this moment, when you solve a puzzle, where everything clicks and you figure out the right answer.  _ That’s _ an epiphany. So if you put a bunch of people in a life-threatening situation and have them solve a bunch of puzzles…” Clover trails off as… well, as she watches Sigma and Phi have an epiphany.

“...That’s it? That’s why we played the Nonary Game?” Phi says.

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.” Tenmyouji sets his now empty container of spaghetti to the side. “That’s the only reason Nonary Games have ever been played, as far as I know. The first one was the experiment Clover mentioned to prove the existence of the morphogenetic field. The second one happened nine years later to create a resonant event that Akane could access in the morphic fieldset to save her life nine years earlier. In other words, a time loop. And now…”

“We’re in another time loop,” Clover finishes. “God damn it. When are we finally going to get away from these stupid Nonary Games, Junpei?”

“Well, Akane’s dead, so unless sixty seven year old Sigma wants to throw us in another one, we should be safe,” Tenmyouji says drily.

“So to recap, if we’re facing epiphany and danger, we’re more likely to SHIFT, and that’s why Zero Sr. made us play this game,” Phi says.

“Yeah. SHIFTing that far back, with your memories intact, is pretty damn difficult. And you two have never even SHIFTed before. If I’m remembering correctly, being around other espers who can SHIFT helps people manifest the ability themselves,” Tenmyouji explains.

“I can’t SHIFT, but even me being around should increase your power, too. But why were Alice, Dio, and K here, then?” Clover says, confusion evident in her voice.

“Maybe because Akane looked into the future and saw them here?” Tenmyouji guesses with a shrug. “Dunno. It’s not important now.” He turns to Phi and Sigma. “So. What do you want to do?”

Sigma and Phi exchange a glance. “Why are you asking us?”

“Well, are you going to try and jump back in time? We don’t know exactly where you need to jump, or if you can even  _ make _ the jump. Doesn’t sound like the kind of decision anyone else should be making except for you two,” Tenmyouji points out.

“Oh…” Sigma sighs. “I don’t know. I need time to think about all of this.”

“Makes sense. We kind of just dumped a lot of information on you all at once, huh?” Clover says. 

“You may not actually  _ have _ to make the jump,” Tenmyouji says, picking up the notebook again. He draws a dot, labels it RADICAL-6 RELEASED, then draws a line connecting to another dot and labels this one AMBIDEX. “Assuming the timeline only branches for non-trivial choices, this is what it should look like, roughly speaking. But from this point—” Tenmyouji points to the AMBIDEX dot with his pencil. “The timeline branches like crazy because of all the choices involved in the Nonary Game. For example, there’s timelines where we make different door choices, or where people don’t die or do die, and so on.” Tenmyouji draws many lines coming from the AMBIDEX dot. “To complete the time loop, only one Sigma and one Phi from all of these timelines have to jump back. There’s nothing saying it has to be the two of you.”

“What if another version of us also tries to SHIFT back?” Phi asks.

“Then you’ll switch places. Only one version of you will occupy your body in the past. The other version of you will end up in this timeline, or they might bounce back to their own, depending on the order of SHIFTs.”

Phi frowns. “But we can’t guarantee that there’s another timeline where we get to this point.”

“Well, we  _ can _ guarantee that there’s a version of you that jumps back successfully, since I met them before the timeline branched,” Tenmyouji says.

“Then, shouldn’t we let a different version of us jump back? Maybe there’s a timeline out there where we actually know how to SHIFT,” Sigma points out.

“I’m not making the decision for you. You two can think it over by yourselves,” Tenmyouji says firmly.

“Hey, Junpei. Do you think I could jump back, too?” Clover asks.

“You can only SHIFT if you have a body to SHIFT to. Since Akane brought you here in the cold sleep pods, the only jump you could make is to your body in the pod, or to the time before that. But you can’t jump back and continue your life in the past,” Tenmyouji says, shaking his head.

“Aw, man. Well, I guess I didn’t expect it to be that easy,” Clover says dismissively. Tenmyouji examines her face intently, but she doesn’t look disappointed or even surprised.

“You should come live with us, Miss Clover!” Quark says excitedly. “I can show you all the cool stuff we’ve found, and we can go scavenging together! And Grandpa Light and Grandpa Aoi will be so happy to see you.”

Clover grins. “I have nowhere else to go, I guess. They’re the only person I know here in the future, so...”

Tenmyouji rolls his eyes. “I didn’t need to look into the future to see this coming.”

[ **Tenmyouji route** :

Alice sighs. “I suppose I’ll have to come, as well?”

“Of  _ course _ !” Clover says excitedly, and Alice smiles a little.]

“Um, Luna…” Clover turns to Luna, who has been uncharacteristically silent this whole time. “Are you okay?”

“Oh. Yes, I’m fine. I just didn’t want to interrupt, now that…” Luna’s gaze drops. “Now that you know that I was working with Zero.”

[ **K route** :

“Well, I admit that I’m angry that Alice died for something like this, but…” Clover takes a deep breath. “I think she would have been okay with it. To die for a chance to save the whole world. That was just the kind of person she was.”

“You’re allowed to be sad, you know. From your point of view, you just lost a lot of people who were important to you,” Tenmyouji says quietly.

Clover nods, eyes closed. “I know. I’m… a little overwhelmed. But I’ll be okay.” Clover opens her eyes. “The important thing is, I’m not mad at  _ you _ , Luna. I’m glad you were here to help us.”

]

[ **Tenmyouji route** :

“Nah. I’m just mad at Akane and old man Sigma,” Clover says firmly.

Alice nods in agreement. “It’s not like you were the one who made this game happen. If anything, you helped us.”

]

“Oh. That’s a relief,” Luna says, her smile returning to her face.

“Actually, I have a few questions, if you don’t mind,” Tenmyouji says. He has a feeling it isn’t going to be this easy, but he might as well try.

“Um…” Luna pauses, then nods. “Okay. I have permission to tell you whatever it is you need to know.”

“Who’s Zero?” Clover asks immediately.

“Zero Sr. is Sigma,” Luna says, startling everyone in the room.

“Wait, wait, hold on.  _ I’m _ Zero? Don’t you think I would remember something like that?” Sigma says, voice raised in shock.

Tenmyouji sighs and shakes his head. “Not you. Future you. You and Akane were probably working together to come up with a plan to send Sigma’s consciousness back in time. Once they realized they were in the timeline where Radical-6 had escaped, they knew that they were the ones who had to close the time loop. Maybe that’s why Akane tried to erase my memories.”

“She did  _ what _ ?” Clover says angrily, whirling around on one heel to face him.

“She tried to erase my memories using a special drug. It would’ve worked if I hadn’t already known she was going to do it.” Tenmyouji scrubs his face with his hand. “She probably wanted to prevent me from getting involved with the creation of this Nonary Game. Luckily for her, I had no intention of doing that in the first place. I wasn’t going to leave Aoi and Light behind to die.”

Clover lets out a frustrated yell. “If she wasn’t already dead, I’d kill her! Who the fuck does she think she is?”

“I have a few choice words for her myself, but there’s nothing we can do now,” Tenmyouji grumbles. “Dio killed her, right? To get into the game?”

Luna nods. “I… wanted to stop him, but I, um, couldn’t.”

“Knowing Akane, it was part of her plans. That’s why old man Sigma and she left Zero Jr. behind. With everything automated, they could both be removed from the picture,” Tenmyouji says darkly. “Did they happen to tell you what time loop they were trying to complete?”

“No, I’m sorry. They didn’t say,” Luna says. “They wanted me to know as little about the game as possible. And, um, Zero Jr. doesn’t know, either. We were both just following orders.”

“Following orders, huh… I guess that makes sense. Especially if Free the Soul was targeting this place.” Tenmyouji closes his eyes. Now that he’s had something to eat, he’s just really, really tired. He dozes off again.

Eventually, Sigma and Phi make their choice.

And finally, finally, Tenmyouji gets to leave this damn Nonary Game behind.


	11. Alice Route / Sigma Route

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tenmyouji is tired of this shit.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed the bracket notation from last chapter, because it's back! Alice and Sigma routes are almost exactly the same for the purposes of this fic, except of course the bombs have to be in different places, just to make my life difficult.

[ **Alice route** :

Alice takes Dio down skillfully, thoroughly convincing Tenmyouji that he should never get on her bad side. He considers stepping in to stop Dio from committing suicide, then decides the bastard deserves to die.

Besides, he gives them the password for bomb number three.

]

[ **Sigma route** :

Tenmyouji knows that he’s going to start the detonator by taking Dio down. He also knows that he has no choice. This is the timeline where they get the password for bomb number two. He just has to hope that they’re able to stop the bombs before the time limit.

]

Tenmyouji closes his eyes and tries to think. What had the code been that Akane had given in her letter? It’s at the edge of his mind, but he can’t quite reach it. Damn Soporil.

“Sigma,” Tenmyouji says, interrupting whatever conversation had been going on after Dio’s death. “Do you remember the letter that the old woman had with her?”

“The… letter…” Sigma furrows his eyebrows in concentration.

“What are you talking about?” Clover asks.

Tenmyouji sighs. This is bullshit, but they’re about to die, so he can afford to spill it. “Alternate timelines. Histories where things went differently.”

Clover’s eyes widen. “The morphogenetic field…”

“Yeah. That’s our best bet right now since we only have one password. I know where the input device is, and I know the password to the number one bomb, but that’s all I’ve got. Damn Soporil’s still affecting my memory,” Tenmyouji says.

“There’s four bombs,” Phi says. “I… just know it. I think I know the password for the number zero bomb.”

“Great. We just need one more.” Tenmyouji looks at Sigma. “Well? Got anything?”

“Santa… June… November first?” Sigma says slowly.

That sounds like it could be right. Aoi, Akane, Clover. “Zero Jr.! Where the hell are you? We’ve got a password for you.” Tenmyouji yells at the ceiling.

Zero Jr. appears. Zero Jr. pops up on the screen. “Well, well, weeeeeeell, it’s about time you rang, Tenmyoldy. Do you _hoppen_ to know the password?”

“It’s Santa, June, November first,” Tenmyouji grumbles.

“Ding ding ding! Command acknowledged. Unlocking bracelets… now.” As Zero Jr. says the words, the bracelets fall right off their wrists. “Unlocking all doors in the facility except the number nine door. You guys are lucky that she left that for you. Zero reaaaally didn’t want her to.”

“Well, fuck him. I’m not letting us die here because of some stupid destiny,” Tenmyouji says bitterly.

“How much time do we have?” Phi asks.

“Twenty five minutes,” K says. “When he told us the time, I checked my bracelet. It said exactly thirty minutes.”

“Okay. What do we have?” Phi says.

“Input device is in the control room, through the red door. You’ll have to solve a puzzle to open the safe,” Tenmyouji says.

[ **Alice route:**

“Alice, let’s go! Let’s solve that puzzle as fast as we can,” Clover says.

Alice nods. “Since the lab is nearby, that’s where we’ll go once we’re done. Sound good?”

“Great. We’ll send someone with the password,” Sigma says, and Alice and Clover leave the warehouse.

]

[ **Sigma route** :

“I’ll go to the control room and solve the puzzle there,” Clover says, and she runs off before anyone can stop her.

“I will accompany Clover. When we finish, we will go to the botanical garden, where the number one bomb is. Is that acceptable?” K says.

“Yeah, sounds good,” Phi says, so K nods and then leaves the infirmary.

]

[ **Alice route** :

“Okay, does anyone know anything about the number one bomb?” Sigma asks.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “I’ve got the password for the number one bomb, but no damn clue where Dio put it.”

“...The garden. It’s in the garden,” Phi says, uncertainty coloring her voice.

“Great. I’ll wait there for the input device, then,” Tenmyouji says.

“Three’s in the crew quarters, and Dio just told us the password, so we should all know it. What about the password for bomb two?” Phi says.

“I think… I’ve got it…” Sigma says slowly.

“You _think_? Thinking’s not good enough!” Phi yells. Sigma flinches.

“Okay, okay, I _know_. I’ll go up to the lab and wait for Alice and Clover,” Sigma says.

]

[ **Sigma route** :

“Okay, does anyone know the password for the number one bomb?” Sigma asks.

“I do,” Tenmyouji says.

“We don’t know where bomb two is but we have the password. Three’s in the crew quarters, but we don’t have the password,” Phi says with a frown.

““I think… I’ve got the password for number three…” Sigma says slowly.

“You _think_? Thinking’s not good enough!” Phi yells. Sigma flinches.

“Okay, okay, I _know_. I’ll go to the crew quarters,” Sigma says. “What about bomb number two?”

“We’ll just have to look for it. My best guess is that it’s in the pantry because Dio was in there before the AB game,” Tenmyouji says with a frown. “I’ll tell Clover and K the password for the number one bomb and then start looking for the second one.”

]

“That leaves bomb zero.” Phi frowns. “Where would Dio hide something…?”

Sigma’s eyes widen. “It’s between the AB rooms. Where he hid the knife.”

“Right! And the password, he gave it to us outside. I remember it,” Phi says with a nod.

[ **Alice route** :

“I’ll look around the warehouse and make sure it’s there,” Phi decides.

“What should I do?” K asks.

“Go tell Luna what’s going on, and then go tell Clover and Alice where the other bombs are,” Phi says.

]

[ **Sigma route** :

“Luna, I’ll tell you the zero password. You can pass it on to whoever comes through here to disarm it, just in case I don’t get back in time.”

“Where are you going?” Luna asks.

“To help Tenmyouji look for the second bomb. That’s our biggest problem right now.”

]

“Okay, everybody, let’s move!” Sigma yells.

Tenmyouji starts walking, repeating the password out loud over and over again in case his damn mind loses it.

 _You watching, Akane? People can learn to use the field without the actual threat of death, as long as they believe they’re going to die. You didn’t actually have to put the damn tubocurarine in the bracelets_ , Tenmyouji thinks bitterly.

[ **Sigma route** :

Tenmyouji gets to the control room just in time to see the safe open. “Clover, K, I have a password for you. BQZ RGJ DXR. Got it?”

“W-wait! Say it again!” Clover cries out.

“No need,” K says. “BQZ RGJ DXR, for the bomb in the garden, correct? Where do we go after that?” K asks.

“Crew quarters and warehouse A. Maybe swing by the pantry just in case. We think that’s where bomb two is.”

“I’ll help you look!” Clover volunteers. “K, you got this!”

Tenmyouji lets K leave, then heads to the pantry right next door with Clover. Phi meets them there.

]

[ **Alice route** :

Tenmyouji waits in the garden for five minutes before Clover and Alice show up with the input device. Alice plugs the input device into the bomb like she’s done it many times before, then looks to Tenmyouji.

“BQZ RGJ DXR,” he says.

Alice types the password in, and then the bomb beeps and stops glowing. “That worked. Where’s the next one?”

“Crew quarters and warehouse A,” Tenmyouji says. “Where’d Sigma go?”

“He went up to the crew quarters.” Alice is already moving towards the exit of the room, Clover close behind.

]

[ **Sigma route** :

With the three of them searching, it doesn’t take too long to find. The bomb is under the ice machine, in perhaps the most annoying spot possible.

“I’ll go to warehouse A in case K is already there. Clover, you head to the garden to see if you can intercept him,” Phi says commandingly.

“Got it!” Clover gives Phi a thumbs up and runs out of the room.

“You got any work for me to do?” Tenmyouji asks wryly.

“...Find some Axelavir?” Phi says with a shrug.

“That, I can do.”

Phi walks off towards the elevator, and Tenmyouji walks off to the lab.

]

[ **Alice route** :

Well, it sounds like the bombs will be taken care of. Tenmyouji starts walking to room Q.

]

It’s time to make some Axelavir.

~*~

Clover lets out a sigh of relief as she watches Phi disable the bomb in the crew quarters. It’s the last one. They’re okay. “That was insane,” she says.

“Yeah, it sure was.” Phi stands up calmly, as if the whole ordeal was as easy as tying her shoes. “Let’s head back to the infirmary. I want to see if Quark’s doing okay.”

The three of them walk back to the infirmary in silence. Clover’s head is still spinning from all the running around she did in the last half an hour. After the first two bombs had been disarmed, she’d run up to warehouse A with the input device since she was the fastest, and then to the crew quarters with Phi. Things had moved so quickly, she’d had no time to think.

When they get to the infirmary, they find Tenmyouji and Alice arguing with each other.

“Does now _look_ like the time to be holding your cards close to your chest?” Alice says angrily.

“Yeah, it does. I’m not telling you a damn thing. Figure it out on your own,” Tenmyouji replies stubbornly.

“Um…” Clover walks over to Alice and links arms with her. Alice relaxes slightly. “What’s going on?”

“I asked Tenmyouji if he knew anything else about why we were here, since he can access the morphic fieldset, but he refuses to tell me anything,” Alice huffs.

Clover gives Tenmyouji a confused look. “Why?”

“Not my job. Someone else is supposed to give you all the answers, and I’m not doing it for them.” Tenmyouji sounds almost bitter as he speaks, making Clover wonder if he has connections to Zero. How much does Tenmyouji know? “I helped you figure out the bombs, and I told you that all of us have Radical-6. Do the rest on your own.”

“Wait, we _all_ have Radical-6?” Sigma says.

“Yeah. Axelavir’s over next to the ADAM,” Tenmyouji says gruffly. “If we’re done here, I’m going to take a nap.”

“A nap? How can you take all of this so casually?” Alice says sharply, and Clover has to pull her back before she hits Tenmyouji.

When Tenmyouji looks at her, all Clover sees is exhaustion, not just physical exhaustion but the kind that’s been sitting with him for years, the kind that doesn’t get fixed by sleep. “I haven’t slept in four days. I’m starting to go insane.”

Alice begins to say something, but Tenmyouji just ignores her, lays down on the bed next to Quark, and falls asleep instantly.

“What is his _problem_?” Alice says angrily at nobody in particular.

“Most people are delusional after four days of sleep,” Clover remarks.

“Why do you know that?” Sigma asks, giving her a concerned look. _Oh_ , he thinks _she’s_ gone four days without sleep. How kind.

“One of my roommates is really bad at falling asleep. He was hospitalized because he went three and a half days without sleeping while he was going through alcohol withdrawal,” Clover says casually.

“Your roommates are idiots,” Alice says bluntly.

“Yeah, they are. I hope they’re doing okay without me. When I’m not there, they usually make really stupid choices,” Clover thinks aloud.

“Hey, Clover. When Tenmyouji was talking about alternate timelines, you said something about a morphogenetic field. Can you tell us more about that?” Phi asks.

“Sure, but can we handle the Radical-6 problem first? Assuming Tenmyouji was right, at least,” Clover says.

Luna comes up behind the four of them with an injection gun in hand. “I scanned Sigma while you all were downstairs. He has Radical-6, too.”

“Then, I suppose Tenmyouji was probably correct,” K says. Clover hadn’t even noticed him come in.

“Given how we’ve all been exposed to each other, it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Alice agrees.

“Tenmyouji said he left a vial in the lab in case we need to make more,” Luna adds.

“For a man who had supposedly gone four days without sleep, Tenmyouji showed a surprising amount of forethought,” Phi says, looking back in Temyouji’s direction. “Maybe he was lying so we’d leave him alone.”

Clover blinks, and for a moment, she sees herself handcuffed to the sink through someone else’s eyes.

 _Of course_ . How could she be so stupid? She’d seen this exact infirmary before in one of Junpei’s nightmares. Nightmares that Light had speculated were visions of future timelines. The dreams had always been from Junpei’s point of view, so Clover had never considered how _far_ into the future those dreams might have been.

“Hey, Alice,” Clover says slowly. “How old do you think Tenmyouji is?”

“I don’t know, maybe sixty or seventy years old?” Alice says. “Why?” 

Clover does the math. Thirty or forty years. They’d been in here for _thirty or forty years_.

Clover’s connection to the morphic fieldset has been shaky since she woke up in this facility. But _maybe_ that’s because she’s been approaching this all wrong. She’s been trying to access the _past_ . What if she tries to access the _present_?

Clover closes her eyes and reaches out into the field. What’s going on here? What’s going on in this game? What year is it? How did her and Alice end up in this time period? Who is Zero, and why was this Nonary Game held? How does Tenmyouji know so much?

Clover opens her eyes, and she _remembers_.

“I don’t think Tenmyouji was just being a jerk. I think… he was actually right,” Clover says slowly.

“What do you mean?” Phi asks. Luna walks around to Clover and injects her with the gun as she’s figuring out how to respond.

Clover shakes her head. “I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to, but because I _shouldn’t_ . You _have_ to figure it out on your own. Specifically Sigma and Phi.”

“Sigma and Phi?” Alice looks over at the two of them, probably hoping they know what Clover means. Naturally, they have no clue.

“Mhm. And Tenmyouji and I have made it super easy for you, too. So good luck!” Clover says happily, and she skips over to Junpei to fetch the letter that she knows he has in his shirt pocket. She mostly remembers what’s in the letters, but she might as well read them again, just to be sure.

“What the hell does that mean? You haven’t done anything for us!” Sigma yells.

“Come on, just think it through. You’ll get it eventually,” Clover assures him. She sits on the empty bed and opens the envelope. There are three letters inside.

“What’s this?” Alice asks, walking over to Clover.

Clover hums as she unfolds Aoi’s letter. “Some letters. One from Aoi, one from Light, one from Junpei.”

“Letters from your roommates?” Alice frowns. “Why does Tenmyouji have these?”

“Mmm, I can tell you, but I have to wait for Sigma and Phi to leave first,” Clover whispers.

Alice sighs, but she sits down next to Clover and begins to read Aoi’s letter. Clover listens to the conversation on the other side of the partition. Eventually, the room falls silent, and Clover peeks around the partition. Sigma, Phi, K, and Luna are all gone. Finally.

“I thought they’d never leave,” Junpei grumbles, startling Clover.

“What the _hell_ , Junpei? You’re supposed to be sleeping!” she whisper-yells, still cautious that someone could be listening.

“And when have I ever been good at that?” Junpei mumbles, but he keeps his eyes closed. Clover walks over to the side of his bed and runs her fingers through his hair. It’s so much thinner than it used to be.

“I’m sorry,” Clover whispers. She’s not quite sure what she’s apologizing for, but she feels like he deserves it, anyway.

“I should be apologizing to you. I can see the damn future and I couldn’t figure out where Akane was keeping you,” Junpei says bitterly.

“But you figured out how to save all of our lives,” Clover says with a small smile. “You’re so silly, Junpei. You do all these amazing things and you don’t even realize it.”

Junpei sighs, but doesn’t say anything.

“Did you really not sleep for four days?” Clover asks.

“We’ve been here for two days, and beforehand I didn’t sleep for two more. Only sleep I got was that fucking Soporil, which you can imagine wasn’t very restful.”

Right. Soporil makes Junpei panic. All anesthetics do. Clover had seen it firsthand in the hospital.

“Then you should sleep now,” she says softly.

Junpei groans quietly, but for once, he doesn’t argue. He just lays there, eyes closed, breathing slightly labored. Clover takes his hand in hers. It’s so much more frail, the skin scarred and wrinkled, the bones distinctly showing their shape through the skin. He’s still so skinny, Clover laments, and there’s dark circles under his eyes. He must have been so worried leading up to this day.

“We were asleep for a long time, huh,” Alice says, walking over to join Clover. Reading Aoi’s letter probably gave her enough to piece the truth together.

“Yeah. And Junpei spent the whole time looking ahead to the future to see the different ways that things could play out,” Clover says mournfully. She continues to run her free hand through his hair, his thin, white hair.

“He actually got sick, right before we came,” Quark says, surprising them both. He’s sitting up on the edge of his bed, looking over at Junpei. “Grandpa Aoi had to force him to rest. He was so worried that he’d somehow missed something, or that he’d mess up.”

“That sounds like him.” Clover swallows her guilt. It isn’t her fault that she was kidnapped. It isn’t her fault that she was in cold sleep.

Quark slides off the bed and stands on the other side of Junpei’s bed. “Grandpa is really a great person. I’m really lucky that he took me in.”

“If anything, you’re lucky that he didn’t have to raise you alone. No offense to Junpei, but he’s not the first person I’d trust with a kid,” Clover says with a playful smile.

Quark grins. “Grandpa Aoi told me that Grandpa was really bad at mixing my formula at first, and he’d always freak out when I cried.”

“Yeah, I bet Aoi was a lot calmer. He basically raised Akane, after all,” Clover thinks aloud.

“Mhm. And Grandpa Light…” Quark trails off, his eyes suddenly filled with regret, and his voice gets quieter. “Grandpa Light tries especially hard to make sure that he pays attention to everything I say. I think he’s worried that I’ll get upset if he forgets stuff.”

Tears come to Clover’s eyes, and she tries to force them back. She wants to see Light again, to hug him and thank him for staying alive and help him as much as she can. Aoi hadn’t been too specific about Light’s condition in his letter, but Clover figured it couldn’t be good if he’d had a virus attacking his brain for ten years.

“He’ll be really happy to see you again, Miss Clover. He talks about you all the time,” Quark says.

“Oh, really? What has he told you about dear Clover?” Alice asks with an amused smile.

“He says that Miss Clover is the best sister ever, and she was really supportive after he lost his eyesight. She’s brave, and she can do anything she wants to. But she also sometimes worries over little things and jumps to conclusions. He says that she’s easily flustered around her girlfriend, too.” Quark pauses, and his eyes widen. “Wait. Miss Alice, are _you_ Miss Clover’s girlfriend?”

Alice chuckles. “Yes, that would be me. Light is absolutely correct, by the way. Clover is very easy to tease.”

“St-stop it!” Clover says, her cheeks flushing red.

“Well, Quark, what can you tell us about our situation? Junpei wouldn’t give us anything,” Alice says.

“Mhm, he told me that I could only tell you both if you figured out who he was. He said that I was in charge of telling you everything if he wasn’t able to,” Quark says proudly. “We’re in a moon base right now. It’s January 27th, 2074, if Grandpa did his math right. And, um, he said Earth is really different from what you remember.”

“There was a Radical-6 pandemic, right?” Clover tries to remember the information she’d gathered in other histories. “The virus escaped from the Mars test site, and it spread really quickly. To get rid of the virus, a bunch of crazy people set off eighteen antimatter reactors at the same time. Between the virus, the inability to transport food, and the reactors, six billion people died. A bunch of dust was thrown into the air, and there was a seven year long nuclear winter.”

“There’s still a lot of dust in the air. When I was younger, I would inhale dirt and sand by accident,” Quark says. “But I don’t know about the rest of that. None of my grandpas like talking about it.”

“I suppose they wouldn’t, if they lived through it,” Alice says softly, glancing down at Junpei.

“I don’t know what happened, but I know it must have been really hard. Grandpa Light and Grandpa Aoi both can’t walk anymore, and Grandpa Light can’t even use a wheelchair. I think all three of them have nightmares, too. Sometimes I crawl into bed with Grandpa and sleep next to him and it makes him feel better.” Quark looks down at Junpei with a fond expression. “Grandpa has done so much for me. I want to do things for him, too. That’s why I agreed to come here.”

“Because if you didn’t, Zero was going to kill me,” Clover says, voice raw with guilt.

Quark nods. “I think all my grandpas would be really happy if they could see you again. Plus I knew Grandpa would be able to protect all of us. He’s super smart.”

Clover looks down at Junpei. For once, he looks at peace in his sleep.

“Yeah,” she says. “He really is.”

~*~

When Tenmyouji wakes up, Sigma and Phi are in the beds on either side of him. He can hear voices from the other side of the partition. Clover and Quark are standing on either side of his bed, talking quietly.

“How are you feeling?” Clover asks.

Tenmyouji winces as he sits up. His head is pounding and his vision is slightly blurry. Damn sleep deprivation. He feels like throwing up. “Worse than when I went to sleep,” he grumbles.

“Maybe if you took better care of yourself, you wouldn’t be having this problem,” Clover says, but her voice is gentle. Damn, he really must have worried her for her to be this _nice_.

“I have the rest of my life to take care of myself.” Tenmyouji starts the laborious process of standing up. Now that he’s squarely in the senior citizen category, he’s aware of every stiff joint and aching bone in his body as he makes even simple movements. One of the reasons he hates sleeping is because it makes everything stiff again. “How long was I out?”

“Well, we don’t _really_ have a way to tell the time anymore, but maybe an hour and a half?” Clover guesses.

“It’s going to take much longer than that to make up for all the sleep you’ve lost,” Alice adds.

“I’ve still got sleep debt from when I was twenty,” Tenmyouji mutters.

“Maybe you should sleep more, Grandpa. You look really tired,” Quark says.

Tenmyouji smiles. “I’m fine, kiddo. How are you feeling?”

“Don’t worry about me, Grandpa. Clover and Alice have been taking good care of me,” Quark says cheerfully.

“That’s good to hear.” Tenmyouji lands on his feet just in time for Sigma to bolt out of bed. “Figured something out, did you?”

“The garden. We have to go to the garden!” Sigma says excitedly, and then he runs off without explaining anything more.

“What’s in the garden?” Clover asks.

“Akane,” Phi answers, handling things a lot more calmly than Sigma (as usual).

“I’m gonna kill her,” Clover says, cheeks puffing out in anger.

Tenmyouji sighs wearily. “I understand the sentiment, but I don’t think killing her will solve the problem.”

“She made you chase her around for a year! And then she threw you back into _another_ one of these things! She kidnapped me and Alice, and Light had to pay for it!” Clover throws her hands up into the air. “Who does she think she _is_?”

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “It’s… not that simple. She didn’t have a choice. This _had_ to happen. All I could do was play damage control.”

“I… I _guess_ …” Clover crosses her arms. “I think I should still be allowed to be angry. And Alice! Alice should get to be angry, too.”

“I’m not arguing with that,” Tenmyouji says with a smile. “All right, let’s go. No use being angry without someone to take it out on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> They never find Bomb 2 in Sigma route, so I made up a place for it. Since Dio puts it in the lab in Alice route (which is where he explored initially), I figured maybe he did the same thing here.


	12. Phi Route

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This route... doesn't change that much. You know, because everyone actually lives.

Tenmyouji wants to scream when he, Phi, and Sigma get to the Q room, but he still has  _ some  _ self restraint, and he doesn’t want to give Akane the satisfaction of seeing him annoyed.

Q, just like the q door from so, so long ago.

Sigma does the heavy lifting when it comes to solving the puzzles. Tenmyouji is more than happy to let him take the lead. He’s had a whole lifetime of stupid games with stupid puzzles, and he doesn’t want any more of it.

Well, that, and this room has Akane written all over it. The Q room, reusing puzzles from the other rooms… it feels like the final hurdle, just like the sudoku in the incinerator. Tenmyouji knows better than to question his instincts at this point.

He distinctly remembers seeing Akane dead in another history. He hadn’t spent much time looking into the circumstances of her death when he’d been SHIFTing through the timelines— he’d been more concerned about keeping Quark and Clover alive— so he isn’t quite sure what changed to land him here. Knowing Akane, he’ll find out soon enough.

Death games and puzzles. Sigma and Phi. Tenmyouji’s memories are finally freeing themselves from the Soporil, so he has a good idea of what Akane is trying to achieve here, and he understands why it’s important for him to not spill the beans. But damn it, did Akane really have to give him so much damn Soporil?

“Tenmyouji? Is something wrong?” Sigma asks, snapping Tenmyouji out of his thoughts.

“No. Nothing’s wrong. I just… think I know why we’re here,” Tenmyouji says slowly. “Or, why the two of you are here, at least.”

“What? Tell us!” Sigma begs.

Tenmyouji shakes his head. “I’m not saying anything while this damn bracelet’s on my wrist. I have no guarantee Zero won’t consider it a violation of the rules and kill me right now.”

Sigma looks pissed about that, but Tenmyouji doesn’t budge. He can’t tell them; it would ruin the effect of epiphany. And… he’s pretty sure Akane has no reservations about killing him as long as there’s a timeline where things go right. It hasn’t stopped her in the past, anyway.

Yeah, maybe Tenmyouji is a  _ little  _ resentful. 

For forty five years, Clover has been gone from his life. For ten years, he hadn’t known if Light was alive or dead, and for the years after that, he’s had to watch Light struggle to recover. Aoi has worked himself to death trying to keep New York in one piece, and Tenmyouji hasn’t been any damn better.

It’s not Akane’s fault. But sometimes it feels like it is.

Tenmyouji hears the beeping noise that signals that the safe has opened. He looks back at the safe to see Sigma pumping his fist in the air and Phi taking the star cards out of the safe. From the corner of his eye, he sees a light flash. He doesn’t need to say anything because Sigma notices it, too.

A hologram appears. “Akane,” Tenmyouji whispers, his voice a mix of bitterness and relief. A strange mix, to be sure, but his feelings for Akane have always been complicated.

He listens to her spiel in silence until his name is mentioned. “I believe you experienced something very similar nearly half a century ago. You sent your consciousness to the past to help save a little girl’s life. It was a long time ago, but… perhaps you still remember?”

Tenmyouji smiles despite himself. Akane… how could she even  _ think _ that he’d forgotten the Nonary Game that changed his life? “Yeah, of course I do. How could I forget? That little girl was you, Akane.”

Akane says some more cryptic and confusing things. They aren’t for Tenmyouji to hear. The only other thing she says to him is that she promises she’ll see him again. Tenmyouji doesn’t know how to feel about that.

They go back to the infirmary, and Luna injects Alice and Quark with the Axelavir. Tenmyouji is overwhelmed with relief. Tears prick the corners of his eyes, and for once, he doesn’t try to hold them back. Quark’s  _ okay _ . Tenmyouji feels like he can breathe again.

Luna, K, Sigma, and Phi leave the room shortly after so they can go vote in the Ambidex Game, leaving Tenmyouji alone with Clover. Well, now’s as good a time as any to do what he came here for.

“Clover,” he says quietly, startling the girl. She turns towards him with a confused look on her face.

“Do you need something?” Clover asks slowly.

“I… have something for you. But you have to promise not to open it until we’re outside, okay?” Tenmyouji pulls the envelope out of his shirt pocket.

Clover eyes the letter with concern. “What is it?”

“A… message of sorts. From some friends of yours,” Tenmyouji says with a small smile. “Just trust me, okay?”

“...Okay.” Clover gingerly takes the letter and slips it into her right boot, since she doesn’t have pockets.

His promise now fulfilled, Tenmyouji turns back to Quark. He looks so peaceful when he’s asleep. He has no idea just how close he was to dying, as it should be. Kids shouldn’t have to worry about death games.

Two hours pass. They play the AB game three times. Tenmyouji takes a short nap because he hasn’t slept in far too fucking long for someone his age. Sigma and Phi finally wake up, and everyone gets them up to speed.

Finally, it’s time to go through the number nine door. Tenmyouji can’t wait to get this damn bracelet off.

When they finally walk out onto the Moon, Tenmyouji realizes that Akane has left  _ him _ to do all the explaining, damn her. Well, he has no choice now. Time to break the truth to them.

After Tenmyouji’s impromptu history lesson, Clover approaches him. “The envelope you gave me. What’s in it? I can’t take it out since we’re in these suits.”

Tenmyouji can’t resist the urge to mess with Clover a little longer. He’ll give her the answer she’s looking for, but not without a little fun first. “Oh, yeah. Didn’t think of that. Well, now that you know we’re in 2074, it shouldn’t be too hard to guess who might’ve missed you enough to write you a letter, right?”

“What does that mean? I have lots of friends!” Clover says indignantly.

“Huh, really? How come I never met any of them? The only person you ever brought to our apartment was Alice,” Tenmyouji remarks.

“Our… apartment…?” Clover’s eyes widen. “Who… who  _ are _ you?”

Tenmyouji grins. “Aw, come on, at least take a guess. You’ve got a one in three chance”

“Ugh! You’re the worst!” Clover punches him in the arm. “Quark, do you know Tenmyouji’s full name?”

Quark shakes his head. “I just call him Grandpa.” While this is true, Quark refers to Aoi and Light by name, so he’s totally lying for Tenmyouji’s benefit. Good kid.

“Okay, then… I’m going to guess that you’re Junpei, because Junpei has the worst luck in the world, so it makes sense that he’d end up here,” Clover decides.

Tenmyouji gives her a withering look, but with their helmets on, the effect is completely lost. “You’re right, but I’m not thrilled with the reasoning you used to get there.”

“Um, Grandpa…” Quark points to two people running back into the building.

“Well, guess that’s our cue. We should follow them,” Tenmyouji says.

As soon as they’re back inside and they’ve taken their suits off, Clover barrels into him and nearly squeezes him to death with how hard she’s hugging him. “Clover, you’re going to kill me,” Tenmyouji wheezes.

“Shut up and take it!” Clover says, but she loosens her grip a little bit. “I’m still mad at you for not saying anything earlier.”

“We couldn’t say anything. Zero said he would kill us if we said anything. And if you knew who Grandpa was, it would be pretty obvious that you were from the past,” Quark says.

“Hmm.” Alice looks Tenmyouji over. “Now that you’ve told us, it seems obvious. You look just as tired and fed up with life as you did when you were younger.”

Tenmyouji groans. “Forget Zero killing me.  _ This _ is why I didn’t say anything. You’re both ruthless.”

“Oh, Tenmyouji, Alice, Clover, Quark, we’re all following Sigma. He says that we’re going to talk to someone important,” Luna calls from the door.

“Two hundred EU says it’s Akane,” Tenmyouji grumbles, but he follows behind. He didn’t come here to see her, but he wouldn’t mind it. He hates it, but she’s probably the person who understands best how fucking annoying it is to read timelines every day for four decades.

“Akane? That’s the name of Grandpa Aoi’s sister, right?” Quark asks.

Tenmyouji nods. “Yes. That’s her.”

They walk out onto the lift, where Sigma is impatiently waiting for them. As soon as they step on, Sigma hits a button and the lift travels downwards towards Warehouse B.

Clover pulls the envelope out of her boot, and she begins to read the letters as they walk to the garden. She reads Light’s letter first, Tenmyouji guesses, because after she’s done, she begins to cry.

“Is everything all right?” Luna asks worriedly, looking at Clover.

“Y-yeah,” Clover says through sniffles, and she tries to give Luna a smile. “I just… need a moment. My brother…”

“He’s not dead,” Tenmyouji cuts in. “But he’s a little… scrambled from fighting off Radical-6 for ten years. I think it will help him to see you again.”

“O-okay.” Clover sniffles as she opens the next letter. “Is Aoi alive, too?”

“Yeah. He’s on permanent house arrest because he kept trying to help with manual labor when he really shouldn’t be, but he’s still working hard from bed,” Tenmyouji says gently.

“Thank goodness.” Clover, overwhelmed, begins to cry again. Alice pulls Clover into a hug.

By the time they get to the garden, Clover has read Aoi’s letter and calmed down a little bit. Tenmyouji, on the other hand, has finally regained all his damn memories. The morphic fieldset has fed him some information from other timelines, so he has a feeling he knows what’s about to happen. After all, Akane isn’t dead in this timeline.


	13. Alice Route / Sigma Route / Phi Route: Ending

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tenmyouji vaguely remembers the events of DCOM, so seeing Akane isn't his first priority, but it's a nice bonus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Side note: Clover's mad because she lived with Junpei after 999, so she got to watch his slow decline into alcoholism and despair, and she blames Akane for it.

He’s able to hold himself back until Sigma and Phi have been sent back to the past. Now that Akane’s objective has been achieved, she should have no problem taking the time to have a conversation. Tenmyouji begins to walk up to Akane—

And then Clover runs up to her and slaps her across the cheek. “ _That’s_ for making Junpei suffer. And Aoi says that you can go fuck off.” Tenmyouji sighs. He never _had_ been able to convince Aoi or Clover to stop being angry with Akane.

“I understand your frustration, but you do realize why this had to be done, don’t you?” Akane says calmly.

“That’s bullshit! There’s lots of other espers out there. Why didn’t you take one of them? Or, I don’t know, why didn’t you _let me live my life_? Pretty sure that I’d still be an esper as an old woman!” Clover yells. Tenmyouji is so shocked by how angry Clover is that his own annoyance dissipates.

“There would be no guarantee that you would live through the pandemic,” Akane points out.

“Well, _he_ lived through it, so why the hell wouldn’t _I_?” Clover says, jabbing a finger in Tenmyouji’s direction. “You can say that you were just recreating the futures you saw. But maybe you only saw those futures because you couldn’t open your mind to other possibilities!”

Akane wisely says nothing.

Tenmyouji puts a hand on Clover’s shoulder in an attempt to calm her down. Her words have some merit, but anger isn’t going to get through to someone who’s been hardened by forty five years of impossible choices. “Clover’s right, you know. I changed the timeline by choosing to stand up to you all those years ago. If I hadn’t done that, you would’ve let us die in all the timelines where the AB Project failed,” Tenmyouji says wearily. Bombs. Radical-6. Handcuffed to the sink.

“A little sacrifice is necessary for the greater good,” Akane says, clinically calm.

Tenmyouji knows that this isn’t the Akane he knew all those years ago. But he has to hope, because it’s all that’s gotten him through the last forty five years of hell. “Akane. Do you remember what I told you, all those years ago?”

“Yes. I could never forget,” Akane says, and her expression softens. She’s still in there, even if she had to lock the best parts of herself away to keep moving forward. He knows, because he had to do the same thing. “Sacrifices were necessary for the greater good… but I’m glad they were mostly yours and mine. Thank you, Junpei. What you did wasn’t easy.”

Tenmyouji is completely caught off guard by this. Clover clearly is, too, because she gives Tenmyouji a questioning look.

“The last thing Junpei asked me for was to implement a failsafe. The only way that the AB project could succeed with a failsafe was if one of the players had all the answers and knew when and when not to give them,” Akane explains.

“But for me to have all the answers, I had to spend forty five years learning how to SHIFT to exactly the right places,” Tenmyouji finishes. “You always make things way more difficult than they need to be. Did you really _have_ to put tubocurarine in the bracelets?”

“The timelines where people died are just as important as the timelines where they did not,” Akane says, and Tenmyouji thinks he’s probably the only person who sees the regret in her eyes.

He knows that she’s right. He didn’t come here to yell at her for that. “Thank you. For trusting me,” he says. “What you did wasn’t easy, either.”

“Perhaps you were right about what we would become,” Akane says with a sad smile. “I’m sorry, Clover and Alice. I believe I owe you the biggest apology out of everyone here.”

“Oh.” Clover, taken aback, looks over at Alice.

Alice sighs. “Well, I didn’t die in _this_ timeline, but apparently I die in practically every other one, so I can’t say I’m thrilled. But if it means there’s a timeline where things turn out better, then… I get it. I don’t like it, but I get it.”

“I’m still mad at you for leaving Junpei and Aoi behind for a _whole year_. I’m way angrier about that than this stupid AB Game,” Clover says, turning away. Tenmyouji can’t help but smile.

All things considered, Tenmyouji is okay with where things have ended up. Clover, on the other hand…

“And you! Fuck you!” Clover runs up to Sigma, who has just managed to stand up, and kicks him in the balls.

“What the hell—”

“Don’t give me that bullshit! You’re the one who put us all through this shitty game, _Zero_.” Clover moves to kick him again, and Tenmyouji pulls her back. “Let me hit him again! He’s an asshole!”

“Beating up an old man isn’t going to change what happened,” Tenmyouji says drily.

“No, but it’ll make me feel better,” Clover protests.

“This is childish,” Sigma says, dusting himself off. “You know very well that our actions were required.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to _like_ it,” Clover yells, and Tenmyouji decides to let her go so she can punch Sigma in the face. He can’t deny that he enjoys seeing Sigma get beaten up. “Okay, I’m done.”

“Don’t I get to punch Sigma, too?” Alice asks, a hint of a smile on her lips.

“You _are_ easily the person who dies the most across all the timelines,” Tenmyouji points out.

“Why do you care what happens to other timelines? You’re in this one, and you lived through the game just fine,” Sigma says, scowling.

The words are very reminiscent of something Akane had said at DCOM, words that had never sat well with Tenmyouji.

“It’s easy to lose empathy when looking at the timelines, but that doesn’t happen to all of us. I don’t just want the best outcome for me. I want the best outcome for as many timelines as possible,” Tenmyouji says gently. Sigma averts his gaze, and Tenmyouji knows that his words have done what he wanted them to do. He turns back to Clover, Alice, and Quark. “Let’s go.”

As they walk away, Quark looks back at Akane and Sigma. “Grandpa, are Miss Akane and Dr. Sigma bad people?”

“They have good intentions,” Tenmyouji says after a moment. “But somewhere along the way, I think they forgot what it means to be human. They just needed a reminder.”

“Oh…” Quark frowns, but nods. “Okay. Clover, Alice, what are you going to do now?”

Clover hesitates. “I… I don’t know. There’s no way for me to go back to the life I left behind, is there?”

Tenmyouji shrugs. “I can think of one way, but it requires a machine that I don’t know the location of. Akane might know where it is.”

“Even if we could go back…” Alice bites her thumb as she thinks. “Do we want to? We’ll be living through a pandemic and the death of six billion people.”

“You say that, but I still count the Nonary Games as the most stressful parts of my life,” Tenmyouji says drily.

“Worse than a seven year long nuclear winter?” Clover asks with a mix of confusion and concern.

“Yeah.” Tenmyouji doesn’t have much to say. He doesn’t even know the reason for why he hates the Nonary Games more than watching the end of the world. Maybe because the end of the world eventually led to the beginning of something new?

Alice frowns. “It’s a hard decision to make. Light might be happier if you’re there with him, but both of your lives might be shorter. As for me, the only thing left in the past is my mother…”

“We contacted her once we realized where you were, and we told her that you were being taken to the moon so that you would survive the pandemic. She was so happy to know that you were going to survive,” Tenmyouji says.

“Thank you for telling her that I was safe,” Alice says warmly. “I’m sure that if she believed that, she was able to die happy.”

Tenmyouji sighs heavily. “She was a big help during the nuclear winter. Aoi and I tried our damndest to keep everyone in our shelter alive, but it was tough on all of us, especially the older folks. She passed about fifteen years ago.”

“Thank you for taking care of her.” Alice’s eyes are sad, but her voice is earnest. How can she be so understanding?

“Um, Junpei, does that mean Hazuki and Seven…?” Clover doesn’t finish her question. She can’t bring herself to say it.

Tenmyouji nods grimly. “It took a long time for hospitals to reopen. There weren’t a lot of places to go for medical care. So people started dying at a much lower age than usual, from things that we’d normally be able to fix with surgery or regular check-ups. They left you letters, too, but they insisted that I not bring them with me. They said that if you were going to die, you should spend your last minutes reading our three letters instead.”

“They’re too thoughtful,” Clover says softly.

“Yeah. They took care of us ‘till the very end,” Tenmyouji says. It’s an understatement, really. Whenever he and Aoi had moments of doubt, Hazuki and Seven were there to give them the gentle push they needed to keep going. Without the two of them, he wouldn’t have made it this far. “Well, everything about this timeline is a pile of horse shit. It’s up to you to pick your poison.”

Alice narrows her eyes. “This is another split in the timeline, isn’t it…?”

“All choices are,” Tenmyouji says with a shit-eating grin. He’s glad Alice caught on to his intended meaning. “So which timeline do you want to be in? It’s up to you.”

“But it’s _not_ up to us, is it? You lived the last forty five years without us. That means we’re in the timeline where we don’t go back to 2028,” Clover points out.

“Maybe I’ve just lied to you this whole time?” He hasn’t, but he did intentionally leave out details so Clover wouldn’t definitively know either way. He wants her to feel like she made this choice on her own because really, she did. The future can change the past, after all.

“Schrodinger’s timeline,” Clover grumbles. “Fine. I think… I want to stay here. I want Light to be happy, but I think… I don’t know, I get the feeling he’d be happier if I didn’t have to see the pandemic with my own eyes.”

Tenmyouji nods. He decides to omit the fact that Light probably wouldn’t have survived forty five years if Clover had been there, because he wouldn’t have wanted her to see him this way. He still doesn’t want her to see him, actually, but that’s something he’s going to have to contend with on his own.

“Then I’ll stay, too. There’s no point dwelling on the past,” Alice decides.

“Yay! You can help me scavenge, and I can show you all the cool stuff we’ve found,” Quark says excitedly. He and Alice start chatting about all the things Quark wants to do with them. It’s cute, and Alice is surprisingly good with kids.

Tenmyouji turns to Clover. “You’ll have to watch all three of us die sooner rather than later, you know,” he says quietly.

Clover nods. “I know. It… will be hard. But I think I’ll be okay. I’ll have Alice and Quark with me.”

“Yeah. You will.” Tenmyouji is surprised to find tears pricking the corners of his eyes. He had been afraid, he realizes belatedly, that Clover wouldn’t choose to stay. That he’d end up in the worst timeline, the one where he worked so hard only for Clover to jump back in time. “Thank you, Clover.”

“I’m not just doing it for you,” Clover insists, but there’s a smile on her face.

Forty five years of sleepless nights and exhausting days were worth it to see that smile again.

“Are you really not mad at Akane at all?” Clover asks.

Tenmyouji sighs wistfully. “If she’d erased my memories at DCOM, I’d be furious right now, even knowing that she didn’t have a choice. But she trusted me to carry out her plan. To reduce the amount of blood on our hands. So… no. I’m not mad. I had Aoi’s and Light’s support. She had nobody.”

“She had _Sigma_ ,” Clover says stubbornly.

“Yeah, she did, but…” Tenmyouji remembers the look in Akane’s eyes when they’d realized what timeline they were in. When she’d realized what she would have to do. When she’d resolved to spend her life without him. “I can’t pretend to know how she feels, but I don’t think she wanted to leave me and Aoi behind.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Clover’s gaze falls to the floor. “I guess if it was only a year, she at least knew she’d see you again when it was over, but this was…”

“Forty five years. A lifetime. I know Aoi told her to fuck off, but coming from him, that’s about the same as saying, ‘I love you.’”

Clover smiles fondly. “Yeah, you’re right, it really is. Do you think Akane knows that?”

“You think she wouldn’t after being raised by him?” Tenmyouji responds, giving Clover a skeptical look. Clover shrugs.

They walk in silence for a little while, still trailing behind Alice and Quark. Tenmyouji doesn’t push it; he knows Clover has a lot to think about.

“Hey, Junpei. How… how bad is Light’s… condition?” Clover asks quietly.

Tenmyouji sighs. “He has good days and bad ones. Took him a couple years to remember how to talk, took him a couple more to get used to moving again. He still can’t stand or walk very well, and on really bad days, he forgets how to move on his own at all. His memory’s not great, and he doesn’t like eating. We usually have to put him on IV fluids. Some days, he gets confused and thinks he’s still in the government quarantine facility. Those are… the worst ones.”

“Oh.” Clover bites her bottom lip. “Do you think… he’ll remember me?”

Tenmyouji gives Clover a blank stare. “As soon as we knew you weren’t going to be back for a while, he had us write down every single thing he could remember about you: every memory, every detail. This was even before he got Radical-6. He just didn’t want to forget a single thing about you so that when you did get back, you wouldn’t feel so out of place. He makes us read those journals to him every day, now, even on days where words don’t make sense to him.”

Clover turns away. Tenmyouji doesn’t need to be a psychic to know that she’s crying.

“He gets confused a lot, and sometimes he sees things that aren’t real, so he might have a little trouble believing that you’re real at first. But you’ve already had to deal with that with _me_ , so it shouldn’t be anything new.”

“Oh, yeah. Are you still an alcoholic?” Clover asks bluntly.

“Alcohol is expensive as hell and extremely hard to get your hands on. Also, I have a _kid_ to take care of, and I’m the only adult in the household who can reliably walk on my two legs. Do you really think I have the time to be an alcoholic?” Tenmyouji says drily, giving Clover a withering look.

Clover giggles. “I guess not. But you’ve always been a walking disaster. If anybody could do all that and still be a drunk mess, it would be _you_ , Junpei.”

Tenmyouji sighs heavily. “ _Please_ don’t say things like that in front of Quark. He’ll ask questions, and then I’ll have to explain what it means to be an alcoholic, and I really don’t want to have to deal with that. I’m a shitty parent, but I don’t need my child to know that.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t undermine your authority,” Clover says mischievously.

Tenmyouji can feel a headache starting to form.

Clover’s face softens. “Thank you, Junpei. You… you tried to save me in every timeline, right? So… I owe you.”

“Would you believe me if I said it was easy?” Tenmyouji says.

“Not at all. I’d ask Aoi about it and he’d rat you out to me, like a good mother should,” Clover says with a grin.

“I’d rat _him_ out in return. Say all you want about my bad lifestyle choices, but he’s not any damn better. Quark’s the only one in our house who eats and sleeps like a normal human being.”

Clover smiles. “Guess it’s a good thing that Alice and I will be around to balance things out.”

“Yeah.” Tenmyouji smiles, too. “Well, Alice and Quark have left us in the dust. Ready to go?”

Clover links her arm through his. “There’s no place like home.”

Tenmyouji rolls his eyes. “What, you want me to click my heels together three times for you?”

“Come on, it’s fitting,” Clover insists.

“Alright, _Dorothy_. Let’s go home,” Tenmyouji says, smiling despite himself.

Now that Clover’s here, it might actually feel like home again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still mad that canon didn't actually show us a conversation between Tenmyouji and Akane, but whatever (shrugs). They have a very different dynamic in this fic than in canon, and for good reason.


	14. Epilogue: Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Forty five years ago, a conversation takes place that changes the course of history.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ZTD spoilers. This is almost directly lifted from the Apocalypse fragment of ZTD, except things go... a little differently.

“I wonder what happened to Carlos…” Akane says worriedly, glancing back at the hallway they’d come from.

“I don’t… know…” Junpei trails off as a sharp pain shoots through his head. He cries out in pain and falls to the floor.

“Junpei! Are you—”

“I’m… fine…” For a moment, Junpei feels like his head is going to explode, and suddenly, he can see two worlds overlaid on top of each other. He’s still in the lounge with Akane, but he’s also in a beat-up cabin looking at a corkboard covered in sticky notes. “What…?”

“Listen to me very carefully, Junpei.” The voice that Junpei hears in his head is  _ his own _ , but he sounds older. This has happened before, he remembers vaguely. While he was at DCOM. But he doesn’t remember that conversation very well. “When you get out of here, Akane is going to try to erase your memory. You  _ have _ to stop her. If she succeeds, you will have a much harder time trying to save Clover. I need you to trust me.”

And then the pain is gone, and he’s left on his hands and knees, trying to make sense of what he just heard.

When he closes his eyes, he can see himself handcuffed to a sink. Clover is right next to him, and they’re struggling to free themselves. There is a bracelet on both of their wrists.

Junpei opens his eyes, and he understands.

“Junpei, are you all right?” Akane asks. She reaches out a hand to help him up. Junpei takes it, but no sooner has he stood up than his legs collapse from out underneath him again.

“Shit. I.. I need a minute. Sorry.” Junpei winces as his headache starts anew. God damn, he hates the aftereffects of these hallucinations. He feels like someone just sucked all the energy out of him.

Akane sits down next to him. “Did you just… SHIFT again?” she asks.

“Not… not quite. It was more like… a version of me tried to SHIFT back here but didn’t complete the SHIFT on purpose. Urgh…” Junpei resists the urge to fall asleep. His vision is starting to blur. He lays himself down completely and closes his eyes.

“Do you think Carlos is coming?” Akane says quietly. She sounds… afraid. Junpei hasn’t heard this kind of fear from her before.

It makes sense. Their lives are about to become very, very difficult.

“He’s coming,” Junpei assures her. “He has to. We have jobs to do.”

“Jobs…?”

“Come on, Akane, don’t give me that. You kidnapped Clover, didn’t you? You knew that this might happen. That Radical-6 might escape,” Junpei says wearily.

“...Yes. I did,” Akane admits.

“So you have a plan. A crazy, stupid, ridiculous plan. I’m not going to stop you. But… I have my own job. If you need Clover for this plan, then I have to make sure I survive long enough to see her again,” Junpei says softly. He’s resigned to his fate. Almost like… well, almost like Akane.

“So you’re not… going to try to stop me? Or help me?” Akane says, and there’s a little bit of hope in her voice.

“No. I don’t agree with what you’re going to do, but...” Junpei sighs and opens his eyes slowly. A lot of hard choices lay ahead for both of them. “We’re both going to become terrible people, Akane.”

“I don’t think you could become a terrible person,” Akane says with a small smile.

“I definitely  _ feel _ like one already,” Junpei says drily. He counts to three and then sits up slowly. His head is pounding. “So I’m guessing… this is probably the last time I’ll see you?”

Akane gives Junpei a sad smile. “I don’t know how much of the future you’ve seen, but… yes, Junpei. I don’t think we’ll see each other again for a long time.”

“Okay.” Junpei has a lot of things he wants to say, but no words to say them with. It’s not like it matters. They’ve lost the timeline lottery. All he can do is try to make this the best possible ending for the people he cares about, and Akane… can’t be one of them.

Gab runs up just then, and Akane welcomes the distraction. Junpei spends the next few minutes fighting off his drowsiness. A plan is beginning to form in his mind, inspired by the small peek he had at the future, but he needs his memories intact to make it work.

The sounds of an explosion fill Junpei’s ears, and he’s just barely awake enough to shield Akane from the resulting debris and smoke. He relaxes as soon as he sees a figure in a yellow firefighter’s suit walk through the smoke. “Carlos,” he whispers. Akane stands up and dusts herself off, but Junpei isn’t sure if he trusts himself to make it to his feet yet, so he stays on the ground.

“Sorry for the wait,” the firefighter says. The voice is too muffled to tell, but Junpei just  _ knows _ . “Well, I guess I was the one that waited… I promised, didn’t I? That’ I’d come back for you.”

Akane squints at the figure. “Wait, are you…?”

Huh, imagine figuring something out before Akane. This has to be a first for Junpei.

Carlos removes his helmet to show his face. “Hey Junpei, Akane! I’m here to save you.”

Carlos has to practically carry Junpei out of the bomb shelter. Junpei’s whole body is shaking from hunger and exhaustion, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep his eyes open. He hasn’t slept well in at least two weeks, and it’s finally catching up to him. Damn it. He needs to stay awake a little longer. 

Carlos explains to him and Akane how he’d come back to save them. If Junpei hadn’t already realized how fucked they all were, he might’ve been frustrated by Carlos’ choices, but he’s just too tired. Akane starts chewing Carlos out for just sitting idly while Zero put his plan in motion, but Junpei holds out a hand to stop her.

“It had to happen, or Sigma and Phi wouldn’t have had a reason to come back to the past,” Junpei says, his voice thin and worn.

Akane falls silent. Carlos gives both of them concerned looks.

“You’re right. I… have to start over from the beginning. I’ll start now, and spend the next forty five years preparing for my plan,” Akane says, her voice a mix of determination and fear. 

“You have a plan?” Carlos asks because, well, he doesn’t know how Akane works. Akane’s spent longer living in timelines than she has living a normal life. She always has a plan.

“In forty five years, I’m going to call Sigma’s and Phi’s consciousnesses to the future,” Akane says. Junpei sees her reach for something in her pocket. He knows what’s coming.

“Don’t,” he says firmly.

Akane almost drops her bracelet in surprise.

“I’ll play dumb. I’ll pretend I don’t know anything. Just… let me keep these memories. Please. They’re… all I’ll have left of you,” Junpei says softly. “I’ll tell Aoi and Light to stop looking for Clover. I won’t intervene in your plan at all. I promise.”

“Junpei…” Akane gives him a pained look.

“I know you think it will be easier for me if I don’t remember you, but it won’t. I’ll spend the next forty five years of my life thinking that I never found you. I don’t… I don’t want that…” Junpei groans a little as his headache spikes for a moment. He’s barely holding on. “My memory’s already shit. I’ll forget enough of what happened here just from sheer lack of sleep.”

“...Okay. I trust you,” Akane says, and she drops the bracelet behind her. “I’m sorry, Junpei. I… I didn’t want this for us.”

“You said that you trust me. Can you… do me one more favor?” Junpei asks.

“What kind of favor?” Akane asks suspiciously.

“A failsafe. For the timelines where things go to shit, or where the plan just isn’t going to work. I won’t use it unless I have to,” Junpei says, hoping he sounds as desperate as he feels. He doesn’t care if he dies, but Clover… he can’t do that to her. He can’t do that to Light. He  _ has _ to have a way to get her out of there. “Hide it. I’ll find it somehow.”

“...All right.” Akane says those two words, and Junpei finally lets his eyes close. He feels Carlos pick him up and sling him over one shoulder. “Carlos, take him to a hospital, please. Make sure he’s safe,” he hears Akane say.

“I will,” Carlos promises.

“Goodbye… Akane…” Junpei mumbles, and then the last of his strength leaves him, and he drifts off into darkness.


End file.
